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Hypersonic missiles travel more than five times the speed of sound, so they can hit a target hundreds of miles away in minutes. They’re hard to stop because they can change course to avoid detection and outmaneuver defensive countermeasures. So the question is, are they effective enough by themselves for a country like Russia to control a geographic territory without also having boots on the ground?
Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan thinks not and highlights two major drawbacks of hypersonic missiles: their limited payload capacity and high cost.
Excerpted from Peter’s July 12 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:
With weapon systems moving toward hypersonics, what’s the point of holding geographic positions anymore? Theoretically, this works… at the push of a button, you can deliver a precise payload across huge distances… but the Russians have shown us this isn’t quite reality.
As the Russians descended into demographic decay, plugging these geographic access points NOW was their only way to prevent a future invasion. Sure, hypersonics are an excellent deterrent, but they’re expensive, can’t carry that large of a payload, and defense systems like the Patriot have proven rather effective.
Oh, and the Russians can’t even make the semiconductors necessary for more advanced targeting and strikes… so unless their enemies never moved, they’re probably looking at a surplus of really expensive paperweights.
While missiles, artillery, rockets, and an air force are all part of a combined arms warfare system, there’s simply no substitute for ground forces. The Russians are finding that even Ukraine, a country they dwarf militarily and economically, can have a shot at the title if they have the numbers and the right equipment.
