Hypersonic Weapons-Part 1: Background and Vulnerability to Missile Defenses

Assessing the desirability of hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) requires understanding what capabilities they may provide compared to alternative systems that could carry out the same missions, particularly given the technical difficulties and additional costs of developing hypersonic gliders compared to more established technologies. Part 1 of this paper considers the primary motivations given for developing HGVs and summarizes the current development programs of the United States, Russia, and China. It then analyzes the vulnerability of hypersonic boost-glide vehicles (BGVs) to missile defenses and finds that evading the most capable current endo-atmospheric defenses requires that BGVs maintain speeds significantly higher than Mach 5 throughout their glide phase. Achieving these high speeds has important implications for the mass and range of these weapons, which in turn affect what delivery vehicles can carry them and how their performance compares to other means of delivery, as is discussed in Part 2.