Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) and Glide Breaker are DARPA’s offensive and defensive hypersonic programs, respectively, and their program managers discuss what’s been done and what’s next.
DARPA is also working the defensive side of the equation with Glide Breaker. Its goal is to research a highly maneuverable kill vehicle to intercept hypersonic weapons during their glide phase.
This Second part of this video, talk about Glide Breaker with program manager Maj. Nathan Greiner within DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. told in Breaking Defense.
When we talk about strategic defense from a policy standpoint, our biggest deterrent is the policy of mutually assured destruction. That’s not something that’s fundamentally changed by hypersonics.
Hypersonics as an offensive capability from [our] adversaries tends to stress those forward deployed defenses. Realistically, hypersonic defense is quite pivotally important for being able to ensure the robustness of those forward deployed regional assets. told Greiner program manager of Glide Breaker.
The way that we’re viewing this system is very similar to the SM-3, which is a multi-stage system that also dispenses a kill vehicle, which then does the final course corrections in order to achieve and consummate the hit-to-kill engagement. That is what we are trying to achieve in the exoatmospheric regime against a hypersonic vehicle.
hypersonic glide vehicle to achieve the hit-to-kill. You’ve heard this before but it’s essentially a bullet hitting a bullet.
When we talk about defense and intercepts, when you’re trying to intercept something [with] a head-on-head collision, there’s necessity to overmatch the threat. If a threat can pull X G’s, you need to be able to pull more G’s than that because as soon as it makes a move you’re now having to catch up. You always have to have overmatch.
When you actually are engaging, you by definition are at the same altitude as the threat. [That means] your maneuverability is essentially the same or on parity as theirs if you’re going the same velocity. Greiner told program manager of Glide Breaker.
That makes pulling an angle of attack maneuver to complete a hit-to-kill engagement very difficult if not impossible for a maneuverable threat. Therefore, we have to go to a propulsive solution to get a propulsive overmatch of this threat.
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