I heard that Russia used at least one missile that was called "hypersonic" in attacking Ukraine. Do you know if this is a real threat to nullify systems like these?
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I heard that Russia used at least one missile that was called "hypersonic" in attacking Ukraine. Do you know if this is a real threat to nullify systems like these?
Hypersonic is an over hyped term. It just means more than 5x the speed of sound.
The Iranians also called their missiles hypersonic because missiles of this huge size, mass and range generally travel more than 5x the speed of sound at some part of their trajectory, at least during re-entry.
Israel intercepted them easily.
The bit about hypersonic that is both very hard and very useful is manouevring to avoid interception at hypersonic speeds within the atmosphere. This means a non-ballistic trajectory that is hard to predict and thus intercept.
Some Iranian missiles fired at Israel were supposed to have this capability on re-entry. But Israel hit them anyway. Its Arrow III interceptor is highly manouevreable at hypersonic speeds.
It is not clear what Russia has is a truely hypersonically maneuvreable in-atmosphere non-ballistic missile.
The fact that Russia managed to take out US Patriot missile batteries in Ukraine says as much about the poor performance of Patriot than about the true capability of Russian hypersonic missiles.
It is notable that Israel managed to take out Iran's best Russian supplied air defence system (S300) with a single shot from a missile (which I think was an Israeli designed air launched ballistic missile which would also be hypersonic).
As to whether Israeli air defences can intercept Russian "hypersonic" missiles, that remains to be seen, but it is certainly quite possible.
At the end of the day the defending side in a long distance missile battle has the huge advantages that are getting greater with time.
As the missile is obviously heading towards the defender, advanced ground based radars and computers can quickly calculate even changing trajectories and put an interceptor close enough to the incoming missile that the interceptor's own sensors can lock on and hit.
By contrast the incoming missile does not know that an interceptor is incoming and cannot take anything other than pre-programmed evasive action. The attackers radars are too far away to detect interceptors and the incoming missile itself can't have sensors pointing in every direction to look for interceptors. This is especially true at hypersonic speeds due to plasma and hypersonic airflow.