Could the U.S. Military Use Lasers to Destroy Hypersonic Missiles?

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Key Points: Hypersonic weapons, capable of exceeding Mach 5, pose a significant challenge to current defenses by outrunning traditional tracking systems. However, advanced countermeasures are under development.

-Space-based systems, such as the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites, aim to maintain target tracking by seamlessly relaying data across multiple radar fields.

-Meanwhile, laser weapons show promise as interceptors due to their speed-of-light response, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. Key efforts like the Navy’s Integrated Power and Energy System (IPES) are being developed to manage energy distribution for high-intensity lasers. These technologies could provide viable solutions to counter hypersonic missile threats.

Can Hypersonic Weapons Be Stopped? The Pentagon’s Latest Defense Efforts

The development of defenses against them outpaces the arrival of hypersonic weapons as it can be simply much too difficult to acquire and maintain a target “track” on an incoming hypersonic weapon traveling at more than 5 times the speed of sound. 

Hypersonic projectiles can travel from one radar aperture or field of regard to another so quickly that defensive systems cannot maintain a continuous track. Because of this, hypersonic weapons can achieve the much sought-after advantage of striking a target faster than an enemy can respond or develop any effective defense or countermeasure. 

Can Hypersonic Weapons Be Stopped? 

Does this mean hypersonic weapons are and will be completely unstoppable? Not entirely, for several key reasons. The Pentagon and military service are working intensely with various industry partners to develop effective new solutions for hypersonic defense, some of which involve space-based technologies designed to network high-throughput Medium Earth Orbit and Low Earth Orbit satellites in position to relay threat data and target track information quickly.

One such effort, called Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Satellites, is engineered to perform this task by essentially “handing off” target detail between otherwise disconnected sensor fields. 

Northrop Grumman’s HBTSS is in development and shows promise, yet some might wonder how it could succeed in tracking or countering a salvo or group of hypersonic missiles at one time. 

What About Lasers?

There is little coincidence that the sheer “speed” of hypersonic attacks quickly generates visions of laser weapons, given that they travel at the speed of light. Could laser weapons offer a glimmer of hope in terms of stopping a single missile or groups of hypersonic weapons? 

It would seem so for several reasons, provided the laser systems are fueled by sufficient mobile power to generate and sustain high-intensity, long-range laser weapons.  

Lasers, of course, travel at the speed of light, and they can function as optical sensors as well as kinetic effectors able to incinerate or disable a hypersonic weapon “in-flight.” Lasers are low cost and, with sufficient power, they can offer a seemingly limitless “magazine” of shots or beams to counter groups of targets.

Image of DF-17 missile. Image: Creative Commons.

Lasers are also scalable, meaning they can be tailored to achieve specific effects and either disable or completely destroy an incoming enemy target. The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, for example, is working on “power-scaling” ship-fired lasers to enable them to perform high-speed, long-range missile defense missions from warships. 

Perhaps the largest advantage of laser interceptors could come in the form of sheer “mass,” meaning a high number of lasers could be fired at once to track and destroy a group of hypersonic weapons traveling together. Achieving this would possibly require new methods of energy management, energy storage, and energy distribution, something the Navy and Northrop Grumman are working on with the emerging DDG(X) destroyer.

 One such system, now slated for DDG(X), is called Integrated Power and Energy System (IPES), a Northrop energy storage and distribution technology able to achieve efficiency and “optimize” energy use across a large number of ship systems at one time.  IPES can allocate power efficiently and across systems on a ship such as radar, lasers, sensors, and electronic warfare (EW). 

About the Author: Kris Osborn 

Kris Osborn is the Military Affairs Editor of 19FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.