Pentagon Accelerates Hypersonic Defense “Glide Phase Interceptor” for 2029

by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

With a heightened sense of urgency in response to the existing and fast-growing Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons threat, Congress is directing the Pentagon to massively “fast-track” its emerging hypersonic-weapons defense technology called the Glide Phase Interceptor.

The GPI program, now progressing with the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency and two industry partners, represents a high-tech, cutting edge effort to establish a “continuous track” on incoming or attacking hypersonic weapons and intercept or destroy them before they can hit their target. Using a collection of medium and low-earth orbit satellites.

The recently approved 2024 National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress mandates that the Pentagon achieve operational status with its GPI by 2029, a year earlier than currently planned. This mandate revs up the pressure on the MDA and its industry partners, Lockheed and Raytheon, to test and prepare the weapon for combat on a fast-tracked timetable.

The legislation further directs that the MDA field “not fewer than 12” GPIs by 2030 and as many as 25 by 2040. Full operational capability is required to be accomplished by 2032.

Satellite Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor System

Perhaps the most critical element of the legislation involves the need for a critical synergy or connectedness between the interceptor itself and a space-based collection of satellites capable of transmitting target track details to the interceptor. The Northrop Grumman system, called the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS), involves a “meshed” network of Medium and Low Earth Orbit satellites able to operate as disaggregated, yet networked “node” capable to establish a target track on otherwise “beyond-line-of-sight” targets such as fast moving hypersonic weapons. This network of satellites is engineered to track the flight trajectory of an incoming hypersonic weapon as it transits from one radar aperture to another. This is the critical challenge, as hypersonic weapons are known to travel so fast that it is, at the moment, not possible to maintain a “continuous” track given the speed with which a hypersonic projectile transits from one “field of regard” to another. This challenge is exactly what HBTSS is engineered to address.