Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven
Hello and welcome. This is Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven, a lot of discussion right now about hypersonics and the pace at which they are evolving technically and the potential gap or deficit between already demonstrated Russian and Chinese hypersonic weapons, a real push right now to accelerate hypersonics. We are lucky to be joined by a leading expert in missile defense and hypersonic weaponry, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, as well as the deputy assistant advisor of national security of the President. So welcome Tim Morrison Excuse me. Thanks for your time.
Tim Morrison, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute
Thank you, Kris. I appreciate it.
Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven
How quickly can the US close the gap? If I recall, I was at a missile defense convention not long ago and a senior Army official flat out said we’re number three right now. And we’ve got to close the gap. The LRHW long range weapon is slated to be ready by 2023. The arrow the Air Force, air launch hypersonic weapon is moving along quickly, Can this gap be closed? So how quickly
Tim Morrison, Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
I think the gap can absolutely be closed. We are looking at on a technology where we have experienced in the past some of this technology was was a feature of the Cold War. The real question is and this is what former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten used to talk about is what is our expectation in our in our risk tolerance? Are we prepared to fail? And and so you know, we look at the number of tests that Russia and China have conducted in so called hypersonic boost glide weapons of course, there’s also hypersonic air breathing weapons, hypersonic cruise missiles, but but chiefly on the boost glide.
The voice guided cruise glide side of the spectrum, we test and we fail, we test and we fail. And we spend years studying each each failure where our our adversaries test and fail test and fail, test and fail. And they’re getting it right because they’re testing more than we are so so we have to be prepared to accept more risks. We have to be prepared to accept that. It’s like sort of like when you when when Edison invented the light bulb, you learned 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. And then you found the way to make a light bulb. We have to realize we’re gonna find a lot of different ways not to make a hypersonic blue sky weapon, and then we’re going to make hypersonic boost glide weapon.
Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven
Interesting. A couple of quick things to follow up and I heard John Hyten the former Chief of Staff talk about the threat when it comes to sensing of hypersonic weapons and potential defenses against hypersonic weapons you read almost every day, so hard to defend against a maneuvering projectile at Mach Five or plus speeds, etc. One of the things he said that’s most in need is sensing and an ability to establish that continuous track your missile defense expert, can there be a way to track a hypersonic flight somehow in between the various radar apertures to get that continuous track to essentially have an opportunity to knock it out? Clearly, Ukraine might not be in a position to do that. What are some of your thoughts on this predicament as far as a new generation of satellites sensing networking of satellites to indeed get that track?
Tim Morrison, Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
So I think the answer is plainly Yes. Again, it sort of gets back to what is our what is our will, we have satellites in place already, both on a government civil, I should say a national security, a civil space and a commercial space. For example, on our national security space, we have the OPIR constellations. And we have very good ability to track a missile launch anywhere in the world. The problem, of course, on a blue sky weapon is once it’s launched, it doesn’t necessarily stay on the same fixed ballistic trajectory.
And so you lose it after launch. If if we wanted to build a satellite constellation, if we’re willing to invest the resources to do it, the technology is not unobtainable, it’s not out of our capacity. It’s really a question of are we prepared to prioritize that over for example, perhaps other space investments or other investments in the in the national security space overall, whether tanks are carriers or aircraft, but the technology is is not actually all that difficult? It’s a question of resources and prioritization.
Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven
On that point, I had an interesting question. Not long ago, I spoke to an AFRL Air Force Research Lab senior official when it comes to S&T and one of the things he said was being focused on his boundary layer phenomenology. So I read up a little on laminar or smooth airflow surrounding a hypersonic projectile, as opposed to a turbulent airflow in which molecules can move around and throw the projectile essentially off course.
So much discussion about the projectile on the airflow and the continuity, the stability of hypersonic flight is an opportunity to disrupt the airflow, something that’s feasible.
Tim Morrison, Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
Kris, this is one of the things I love about talking with you because these are exactly the kinds of ideas that the sort of unconventional ideas because we spend a lot in the missile defense space, thinking about can we kill a missile with a missile? Right? Can we hit a bullet with a bullet? And maybe there are other methodologies, we’ve we’ve experimented with directed energy, for example, as a means of missile defense. Maybe there are other methodologies, for example, the use of microwave energy, or the use of the EW spectrum, we shouldn’t take any option off the table.
As we think about how do we counter this threat, and of course, the advantage of perhaps electromagnetic spectrum or directly energy is you have you have a much cheaper cost per kill, right? If you’re not shooting a $45 million interceptor, at maybe a $15 million, or $25 million incoming adversary missile, you could have deeper magazine depth, and your cost per kill, could be could be far more affordable. Because what you don’t want to find yourself in a position of having to be on the wrong side of the the cost curve, right? You don’t want to have to spend X times more per per defensive kill than your adversary spends in terms of his offensive weapon.
Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven
I really like what you said about accelerating the maturation process I recall, excuse me, Mr. William Roper, the former Air Force acquisition executive talked about the hypersonic development just a few years back, and he talked about accelerating and he said, the point is to achieve a 90% solution, not necessarily decrease capability or quality, but avoid years of checks and milestones and and prototyping, perhaps use digital engineering to look at multiple models at one time, that there really isn’t an opportunity here and quite realistic chance that the US can quickly close this gap with some of the new weapons we’re talking about.
Tim Morrison, Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
It gets back to what, excuse
me, what general heightened talked about? What is our tolerance for failure? What is our what is our risk tolerance, we should, we should absolutely be looking at all these different technologies. And the problem is our system wants to know that technology works before we invest in it. And so if you wind up doing that, you wind up developing a whole lot of little technologies over in DARPA, some really exciting ideas, and then they get caught in that valley of death. When they get by the time they get turned over to a service authority.
And you wind up losing an awful lot of potential because you have such a small risk of failure, and failure shouldn’t be a dirty word, right? We all have kids, we want them to try even if they fail, practice makes perfect. You want to try and I certainly get that there’s a lot of taxpayer money. And there’s a lot of, of demand for those resources, not just in the national security space. But in the domestic spending space. You don’t want to be frivolous with resources, but you have to be willing to try and fail. And right now I think we’re on the wrong side where our tolerance for failure is so low. We’re out what the result is. We’re not we’re not trying enough.
Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven
Well, sure enough, not long ago at that MTA conference, general Thurgood who runs the hypersonic weapons development program said they’re very much on schedule, they plan to have a weapon ready by 2023. And of course, we all know the air launch rapid response weapon, the air fired Air Force, hypersonic weapons, that these are maturing very, very quickly a number of tests, some early prototyping, etc. So there is some some cause for optimism that indeed this gap could be closed, both in terms of hypersonic defense. And of course, some suggests the best defense against hypersonics may, in fact, be offense. So Mr. Morrison, Tim Morrison, thanks for joining us here at the center. It’s fantastic. Your expertise in missile defense is very, very highly regarded. And we’re really glad to have you so thank you.
Tim Morrison, Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
Thank you so much, Kris. Please, please keep writing I’ll keep reading
