Can Hypersonic Weapons Be Stopped? Analysis HERE

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

Cris Sheridan: Host of FS Insider podcast at Financial Sense® Wealth Management

You did mention that there are ways to defend against them (hypersonic weapons). Biden said last night that they are nearly unstoppable. And there has been some different reporting on this. From your vantage point, I understand that directed energy is something that is highly linked to trying to take these things down. What are the mechanisms, the technology that’s in place that we can use against these? 

Kris Osborn, Warrior Maven

Well, that’s a really important question. And there’s long been a concern that there could be what’s called a bolt out of the blue or an incoming salvo of high speed hypersonic weapons, such that it’s essentially impossible to defend against. 

Defending Against Hypersonic Weapons

So the President from what I understand is exactly right, there isn’t a current method of intercept to knock these things out of the air. At the same time, there are several potential misconceptions about hypersonics. 

One, that the US doesn’t have them and two, you can’t defend against them. Now, technically, in an operational sense, that’s true, I will talk about how fast the US is developing them. But on the defense there’s nothing today, but there are several very cutting edge interesting innovations which show what might be called potential promise for the future. 

One of them is as we discussed, boundary layer phenomenology, if there can be a way to disrupt the continuity of the airflow around the projectile throw off its temperature, make those molecules move around, instead of what experts call a laminar smooth air flow. If it becomes a turbulent airflow, well, the projectile itself can be thrown off course.