It is actually very difficult for ballistic missile launches to hide their traces.
Whether it is the heat source reaction in the entire process or the huge cloud trails when flying in the atmosphere, it is difficult to hide it through technical means.
Therefore, it took less than half an hour to complete the test of the Dongfeng-17 waverider hypersonic ballistic missile.
The National Defense Command Center in Yingjiang received missile launch information detected through military reconnaissance satellites.
"Gentlemen, our enemies across the coast appear to have upgraded their ballistic missile systems."
The top officer at this meeting was Wilson, one of the top military officials in the Eagle Army.
At this time, his face was gloomy.
Obviously the information just obtained is not good news for Yingjiang.
At this time, the intelligence officer on the side displayed the latest images detected by military reconnaissance satellites on the large screen in the conference room.
Shown above is the cloud trail as the missile takes off.
Most of the participants have worked in the Army for many years and are not unfamiliar with this phenomenon.
Combined with Wilson's words just now, it is obvious that their opponents on the other side have developed something amazing.
Since the last time they discovered that Longguo had developed hypersonic anti-ship missiles, they have increased their investment in missiles.
Although later agents have discovered that they may have made an mistake before, and the weapons developed by Longguo are not missiles.
However, its high speed and high range still made Yingjiang's military leaders feel a lot of threats.
Therefore, although the research and development funds for hypersonic weapons have been reduced, they are still being implemented slowly.
And in order to counter the Dragon Kingdom's increasingly faster weapons, Yingjiang also began to invest more in anti-missile systems.
The army officers in the conference room did not speak, waiting for the intelligence officer to introduce the situation.
"Half an hour ago, Longguo completed a ballistic missile experiment."
After integrating the intelligence obtained so far, the intelligence officer began to give everyone a detailed introduction.
"According to the results of satellite reconnaissance, the weapons tested by Longguo this time have a range of more than 7,000 kilometers."
"It has been able to directly threaten many of our naval bases in the Pacific!"
The Pacific Ocean serves as an important geographical barrier, and naval bases are built on many islands in the ocean to serve as anchorages and supply ports.
The more important ones here are the Hawaii military bases.
The straight-line distance between this base and the Dragon Kingdom is 6,600 kilometers.
In other words, the latest ballistic missile tested by the Dragon Kingdom can directly threaten this most important base connecting the mainland of Yingjiang and the Pacific Ocean.
At this time, the naval officials who had not taken it seriously at first began to take it seriously.
Originally, they thought that the main participants in today's meeting were people from the Army.
Unexpectedly, within a few minutes of listening, he would be involved.
"Of course the range is not the most important thing. What deserves our attention most is the flight speed of the missile in their experiment."
At this time, the intelligence officer said something that surprised everyone present.
After all, in the eyes of many people present, the range of 7,000 kilometers is already the most noteworthy thing.
Because although the Dragon Kingdom had many long-range ballistic missiles before, these missiles basically had a range of tens of thousands of kilometers.
It is mainly equipped with nuclear warheads, but the missiles they have launched now with a range of 7,000 kilometers are obviously not equipped with nuclear warheads.
The most likely possibility is that it is equipped with a conventional warhead.
This is what they attach most importance to.
"According to our satellite reconnaissance results, the entire strike process of their missiles did not take more than thirty minutes!"
"This means that the average speed of their missiles during the entire process exceeded Mach 7!"
When the intelligence officer said this, there was a tremor in his voice that he was not even aware of.
"And in the middle of their flight outside the atmosphere, according to satellite test results, the speed exceeded Mach 15!"
"What!"
"This is impossible!"
When the intelligence officer revealed the test results exceeding Mach 15, several people in charge of missiles in the Army were in disbelief.
He stood up on the spot and questioned whether there was something wrong with the intelligence officer's data.
In their impression, although the missile's mid-flight flight can reach extremely high speeds.
Generally speaking, it can reach speeds of Mach 10-12 at its fastest, but the speed of Mach 15 is still very scary.
Because this means that the outer layer temperature of the missile will reach extremely high, and even the shell of high-strength alloy will melt and deform.
Even alloy steel doped with tungsten, which has an extremely high melting point, will undergo certain deformation.
"Sorry, everyone."
Although the intelligence officer could understand their confusion, he still gave specific data.
"There is no problem with the satellite data."
"Their missile completed its mid-course flight within four minutes."
"And flew a distance of 1,300 kilometers."
"So the speed of Mach 15 is actually our conservative estimate."
"Based on its speed, the missile's fastest speed may even reach Mach 16."
Myerson, who had been in charge of ballistic missiles for a long time, discovered an unreasonable point in the intelligence officer's data.
"You're saying the missile's mid-flight lasted less than a fifth of the time?"
"This is not common sense!"
The intelligence officer had not thought of this aspect at first. After Myerson reminded him, he discovered that the flight trajectory of the Longguo ballistic missile was indeed unreasonable.
"Normally speaking, the middle section of a ballistic missile is at least fifty percent. How can it be so short!"
Myerson was a little puzzled. He knew that there should be no problem with the intelligence officer's data.
Therefore, the only problem may be the missiles of the Longguo people.
They used a method that no one had tried to shorten the middle section of the missile to about one-third of the original size.
"We don't have an answer to that yet."
"After all, we just learned that they had completed the missile testing."
The intelligence officer was a little helpless. It had just been half an hour since Long Guo's missile completed its flight. It was already extraordinary for them to be able to collect so much data.
"And with that said, isn't their terminal flight time too long?"
Myerson then asked a question at this time.
The ends of ballistic missiles are generally very short because the amount of fuel that can be utilized at this stage is very small and cannot sustain the warhead's ultra-long flight.
The missiles of the Dragon Kingdom obviously violate this common sense.
The final flight spanned a distance of more than 4,500 kilometers, which they thought was simply impossible.
"Gentlemen, I came to you today not to hear you explain the advanced nature of Longguoren's missile technology."
Seeing that the scene was developing into a technical seminar, Wilson knocked on the table with a sullen face, interrupting them.
"I just want to know whether our anti-missile system can intercept their missile strikes."
"We have invested so much money, but can the missile defense system be able to realize its value?!"
Although the Star Wars plan originally proposed when competing with Mao Xiong was nothing more than a massive strategic deception.
However, it is undeniable that Yingjiang has invested huge amounts of money in missile defense systems in the past ten or twenty years.
A systematic missile defense system has been built to deal with possible ballistic missile attacks.
Although whether this system can successfully defend against enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles is still a mystery.
But this does not prevent Wilson from taking issue with the missile defense system at this time.
Myerson was in a particularly difficult situation at this time, and most of the eyes of everyone present were focused on him.
After all, the missile defense system is what Myerson is responsible for.
There was no other way, Myerson could only bite the bullet and said:
"Our current missile defense system is still somewhat incapable of dealing with high-speed targets."
In fact, for ballistic missiles with mid-course speeds exceeding Mach 10, their missile defense systems have a low probability of interception.
In the test just completed, the interception probability was less than 30%.
After all, supercomputing performance these days is not as developed as in later generations, and missile trajectory prediction is not particularly accurate.
This is also an important reason why today, the probability of missile interception is not very high.
In fact, at this time, everyone's missile defense system can only be regarded as a large toy, and the probability of interception is not very high.
The interception efficiency for ballistic missiles is not very high, basically not exceeding 30%.
The missile defense system at this time was actually mainly used to intercept cruise missiles with speeds below the speed of sound.
There is basically nothing you can do against hypersonic missiles with speeds exceeding Mach 5.
"Is this your answer?"
Wilson reprimanded Myerson very rudely.
"With so much money every year, is this how you answer me?!"
"Or, you are all a bunch of moths!"
"All these funds were stolen!"
Wilson's anger is not without reason. Every year, they allocate billions of dollars in funds for the missile defense system.
But now in the face of possible missile threats, it cannot play its role.
Doesn’t that mean that billions of dollars of funds every year are all wasted?
Myerson didn't make any excuses for himself, and even wiped the non-existent sweat on his forehead with some guilt.
Corruption of military expenditures is actually an open secret within the military, whether it is a coffee cup worth a thousand dollars or a toilet worth tens of thousands of dollars.
These are all real situations, but now that Wilson said it on the spot, it obviously has a different meaning.
If I can't tell you any good news at this time, the best way is to remain silent.
While Wilson was getting angry, the intelligence officer received another piece of latest news.
"Generals, I think the reason why the end of the Longguo missile flies an extremely long distance has been found."
After hearing this key information, Wilson could not stop reprimanding Myerson.
Turning around, he asked the intelligence officer:
"what reason?"
The intelligence officer displayed the several photos he had just obtained on the big screen in the conference room:
"Their terminal flight obviously used some special method to extend the flight distance."
The screen shows the wave-like cloud traces of the Dongfeng-17 waverider hypersonic ballistic missile as it flies at the end.
"Can you see the method they used?"
After watching for a while, Wilson, who didn't see any clues, turned to Myerson.
Myerson had just recovered, and after carefully looking at several photos on the display screen, there was an expression of disbelief on his face.
"impossible!"
"This is impossible!"
Then he murmured to himself.
"What method did they use to extend the flight distance of the missile?"
Feeling that Myerson had clearly seen something, Wilson asked impatiently.
It took Myerson a few seconds to recover from the shock, collect his thoughts and said:
"Generally speaking, ballistic missiles adopt a parabolic trajectory, and their trajectory after launch is a parabola."
"But decades ago, the famous missile expert Qian Xuesen once proposed a 'boost-glide trajectory'."
"The characteristic of this ballistic trajectory is that the flight time outside the atmosphere is very short in the middle."
"Judging from the pictures just now, Longguo's latest missiles obviously adopt such a trajectory, which is why their mid-stage flight time outside the atmosphere is so short."
"However, judging from the latest pictures, they not only use the Qian Xuesen ballistics in the middle section, but also have many characteristics of the Sanger ballistics at the end."
"It can advance in waves in the atmosphere at the end, relying on the pressure difference between the upper and lower parts of the atmosphere."
In the end, Myerson himself felt desperate.
In his opinion, there is no way to intercept such a ballistic trajectory.
Unless they can destroy the missile during its ascending stage.
Otherwise, as long as the missile enters the outer atmosphere, there is basically no possibility of interception.
"So is it really impossible to intercept?"
Wilson asked in disbelief.
"It's like when the nuclear bomb was first developed. There was no way to intercept it. We didn't have any means of interception other than developing the same weapon."
Myerson said bitterly.
"None of our current technical means can intercept this kind of missile."
"Because his trajectory is simply impossible to predict."
"No, we must join forces with our allies to develop ballistic missiles that can fight them!"
Wilson said viciously.
Because of the 7,000-kilometer range, it has actually been able to include Eagle Sauce's allies, John Bull and Gallic Chicken, within the strike range.
So Wilson was very confident that if they were the only ones who knew this information, they would not be able to sit still.
"Western world, it's time to unite again!"
Since the disintegration of the Mao Xiong, can the Western world, which has become so alienated from each other, be able to unite? (End of chapter)
