attack.

Enemy attack submarines have penetrated the outermost defensive layer, but aren't within

striking range yet.

The group's two accompanying attack subs and the carrier's anti-submarine warfare aircraft

are busy pinpointing and destroying the small fleet of enemy subs.

It's easy work, the Chinese subs are loud and not nearly as sophisticated as the American's,

but there's a lot of them.

And to make matters worse, they're carrying a brand new type of weapon.

The Chinese subs finally get within weapons range and with a loud rush of bubbles, discharge

several surface-attack missiles each from their torpedo tubes.

The noise alerts the Americans to their precise location, but that doesn't matter anymore,

as the Chinese subs quickly cut and run after launching their deadly payloads.

Moments later, the torpedo-tube launched surface-attack missiles pop to the surface where their rocket

motors fire, sending them screaming up into the sky.

In seconds they're already hitting several thousand feet in altitude.

Inside the Combat Information Center of the two defensive American AEGIS cruisers, the

Tactical Action Officer- Air, calls out the missile attack- eighteen Vipers are in the

air and headed for the battle group.

The battle link that electronically connects the entire battle group together works to

immediately train all available air defenses on the incoming missiles.

The Chinese missiles have risen to about ten thousand feet, then activated their onboard

radars to locate the American fleet.

Aligning themselves with the battle group, the missiles immediately dive down to just

fifty feet off the breaking waves.

Now they fire their engines in full burn, hitting an incredible 11,000 mph (17,700 kmh),

or Mach 14.5.

Over a hundred miles away, the incoming vipers will reach the battlegroup in less than ten

seconds.

The AEGIS battle system sends out powerful pulses of radar to track each incoming viper,

then activates a second, higher precision radar to provide fine-tuned precision guidance

to a salvo of interceptors.

Acquisition and firing takes up to five seconds- leaving only four seconds to intercept each

incoming missile.

But there's a problem.

The Chinese missiles are so fast that they're building up a layer of superheated plasma

around the front of the missile body, scrambling incoming radar waves.

The American AEGIS system can't get an accurate lock, and the intercepting missiles are largely

ineffective.

Out of 18 incoming vipers, 16 of them survive- and there's no time for a second intercept.

The battlegroups CIWS (see-whiz) weapons have already been trained on the incoming threat

and begin firing tungsten rounds at thousands of rounds a second.

But the radar-mounted guns are having the same problem that the AEGIS system had, the

plasma around each missile is making it almost impossible to get an accurate radar lock.

Two more missiles are destroyed, fourteen remain.

In the blink of an eye, the carrier receives a direct hit from five Chinese missiles, blowing

giant holes in the side of the ship and setting off secondary explosions from jet fuel and

munitions.

The submarine-launched missiles are too small to sink the mighty carrier, but it will be

forced to limp back to the US for repairs, and several hundred sailors are dead.

The carrier and its entire air wing are effectively out of the war.

An accompanying destroyer and the two attending AEGIS cruisers aren't so lucky, and two of

them suffer enough catastrophic damage that they begin to sink.

For the first time in half a century, the American Navy has lost a ship in combat against

a foreign adversary.

The battlegroup is severely damaged by the attack, at the loss of just three Chinese

submarines.

The entire carrier strike group has just been rendered combat ineffective, and most of the

men, ships, and weapons that make up one of the greatest concentrations of firepower on

earth have all been put out of the war indefinitely.

The above scenario is clearly fiction, and yet it is very soon to be a reality for the

United States Navy.

A new arms race is overcoming the world, and for the first time in modern history, the

United States is coming at dead last.

Hypersonic missiles are missiles that travel above Mach 5, and can reach speeds as high

as Mach 15 or even 20, and they are currently a threat that no military in the world can

defend from.

Thought of as indefensible, hypersonic missiles have the potential to render the United State's

greatest asset- its carrier battle groups, completely obsolete, and the worst part is:

the US has none of its own right now to retaliate with.

Weapons have been going hypersonic for a long time.

Ballistic missiles after all typically clear the atmosphere and on the way back down to

their target will go hypersonic.

The Chinese and Russians both have been threatening American carrier groups for decades with ballistic

missiles, so what's the big deal with new hypersonic weapons and how are they becoming

a game changer?

Well, traditional ballistic missiles do indeed move very fast, but they also are not very

maneuverable in their hypersonic phase.

Simple materials science has prevented ballistic missiles from being able to maneuver very

well as they descend on their target at thousands of miles an hour, after all attempting to

do so on such a big structure would immediately destroy it from the stress placed on the body

of the missile by the extreme speed and wind resistance.

The wind resistance also heats the skin of the missile up to incredible temperatures,

necessitating the use of a heat shield on any missile that wants to survive to hit its

target.

It's not very efficient to coat the entire body of a missile with a heat shield, so if

a ballistic missile were to turn in its flight and expose part of its unprotected body to

the superheated air, it would immediately disintegrate.

Because they can't maneuver very much, ballistic missiles are extremely predictable and easy

to defend against, but new hypersonic weapons are overcoming the problem of maneuverability

with new materials and engines.

This means that modern weapons can now perform evasive maneuvers to throw off incoming interceptors,

or to simply swing around a target and attack from an unexpected angle.

Speed is another way of protecting hypersonic missiles from interceptors, as the missiles

simply move too fast to be effectively engaged by traditional anti-missile systems.

An AEGIS system for example can track a conventional missile attack at hundreds of miles away,

and give at minimum a thirty second window for engagement.

In those thirty seconds, AEGIS can launch as many as three waves of interceptors against

conventional missiles- against hypersonic missiles that move at Mach 5 or above, AEGIS

may only get as many as two attempts to engage.

If the missiles hit the mind boggling speed of Mach 14 like in our opening scenario, AEGIS

will get one single chance to intercept.

At those speeds, even CIWS, or Close-in Weapon Systems, won't get more than a second or two

to engage.

Speed however creates another problem for defensive systems.

The incredible speeds can build up a layer of superheated plasma around the missile,

which can scatter incoming radar waves.

As every anti-missile system in operation uses very high frequency radar for terminal

guidance on interceptors, this could confuse that radar or render it completely ineffective.

While the United States was focusing its efforts on Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia and China

both began development on hypersonic weapons programs.

Both nations have a vested interest in the technology, as both nations have one big problem-

the United States Navy.

Unless the US Navy, and specifically its carriers, can be neutralized, then Russia and China

are largely helpless to launch any kind of military offensive anywhere in the world.

As American naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan famously said, “He who rules the waves rules

the world”.

For a long time, Russia and China both relied on traditional ballistic missiles and large,

extremely long-range cruise missiles to attempt to threaten American carrier battlegroups.

In response, the United States developed the world's most sophisticated ship-borne anti-missile

system, AEGIS, and America's confidence in its ability to protect its carriers was so

great, that in Cold War war plans against the Soviet Union, American carriers played

a key role in coastal operations against the Soviet Union directly.

In the modern age, not much has changed, and the US remains confident it can operate carriers

in the South China Sea, directly under the threat of Chinese ballistic missile submarines

and land-based missile forces.

To overcome American missile defenses, work began in the mid 2000s on hypersonic weapons

that were simply too fast and too maneuverable for missile defense systems to effectively

defeat.

With the US's attention focused on the war on terror, both Russia and China made significant

strides in this area of research, and in the early 2010s Russian testing of hypersonic

weapons shocked the American defense industry.

President Barack Obama immediately ordered a start on a hypersonic weapons program, along

with a concurrent hypersonic missile defense program that would explore how to protect

from these weapons.

While the US has made serious strides in catching up in this vital area of future warfighting,

it still remains behind.

To make matters worse, Russia now has a hypersonic ballistic missile of its own that's allegedly

fully operational, the Avangard missile.

The missile boosts into space like a regular missile, but then detaches a glide vehicle

that's extremely maneuverable and can reach hypersonic speeds on its descent to earth.

Currently, no defense system can protect from it.

Advances in scramjet technology are also leading to the development of ship, plane, and even

submarine launched hypersonic anti-ship missiles to be used in the Russian and Chinese fleets.

These weapons don't have the benefit of using the earth's gravity to boost to hypersonic

speeds as they plunge from space, so they use a conventional rocket motor to reach Mach

3 and then activate a scramjet to push through the hypersonic barrier.

While the deployment of large numbers of these weapons is still a ways away, the Russians

already have a plane-mounted hypersonic missile that could theoretically be used against American

ships today.

All however may not be lost for the American navy.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and the US desperately needs a way to protect

its critical surface ships- specially carriers- from hypersonic attack.

For a few years now, the US Navy has been developing a way to protect its ships from

hypersonic missiles, and it believes it may have found an answer.

The Regional Glide Phase Weapon System- or RGPWS- is set to be loaded onto Arleigh-Burke

class destroyers, and makes use of the Mk 41 vertical launch tubes already equipped

on those vessels.

That means that once operational, RGPWS will be very quickly proliferated across the US

fleet, ensuring protection against hypersonic weapons for US ships.

But what exactly is RGPWS?

Well, nobody is really sure, and the Department of Defense is keeping an extremely tight lid

on the program.

All anyone knows is that it is supposed to be able to protect from hypersonic ballistic

missiles over a regional area- or several thousand square miles- but it will likely

not be of much use against atmospheric anti-ship missiles.

Hypersonic missiles are changing the way that America is thinking about its own warfighting

future, with many congressmen and women already calling for a rethink of the US's traditional

strategy of investing heavily into massive supercarriers to maintain naval dominance.

If a multi-billion dollar carrier can be destroyed by a multi-million dollar weapon, it would

spell financial and military disaster for the US military.

While no feasible defenses are yet on the table, the US is at least rapidly catching

up to China and Russia in the development of hypersonic offensive weapons.

Currently, the Navy is expecting to have offensive hypersonic missiles on its ships by 2023,

and on its submarines by 2024.

The Air Force is looking to have an air-launched variant by 2022, and the Army wants a mobile

ground platform by 2023.

While how hypersonic weapons will affect the future of war exactly is unclear, what is

clear is that this is one arms race the US can't afford to lose.

Now check out American vs Chinese Soldiers- how do they compare.

Or check out this other video instead!