China’s testing of the hypersonic boost glide missile on its 70th anniversary raises questions whether India should go in for the full order of five squadrons of the S-400 Triumf air defence missile system from Russia or wait and place orders for the other half of the deal for the S-500 Prometey which can intercept and destroy ICBMs and hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft.
The S-400 cannot intercept hypersonic missiles but the S-500 can. For a deal which is worth Rs 35,000 crore, it would be better for India to wait a bit and get atleast three squadrons of S-500 from the total order. The S-500 Prometey is a next-generation surface-to-air missile system with a range of around 600 km.
China’s hypersonic boost-glide missile the DF-17 is a powerful weapon, even when armed with a conventional warhead. The missile consists of a rocket that launches a glider, at more than five times the speed of sound which makes it ‘hypersonic’. The US intelligence estimates the missile’s range at 1,100 to 1,550 miles with the Chinese claiming it can conduct ‘precision strikes.’ Since Beijing is nearly 6,000 miles from San Francisco, it cannot strike the US mainland but definitely India, and that’s why India must have a few squadrons of the advanced S-500 too. According to a US defence expert, China’s arsenal of existing weapons is between 900 and 1,950 ballistic missiles, most of them conventionally armed, with ranges of less than 1,850 miles.
Hypersonic gliders are at a speed disadvantage compared with ballistic missiles of the same range. Ballistic missiles are also boosted to high speed by large rockets, before arcing through the vacuum of space. A glider, by contrast, spends most of its trajectory in the atmosphere, using aerodynamic lift to extend its range. The increased range comes at the cost of faster deceleration caused by atmospheric friction. One implication of this reduced speed is that hypersonic gliders may be more vulnerable to interception by missile defenses. The main advantage claimed for hypersonic gliders is their ability to maneuver during flight and defeat defenses by dodging interceptors.
The DF-17, intercontinental Chinese gliders would certainly be deployed on trucks that are extremely difficult to track and destroy. The Chinese military which launched a rocket into space that circled the globe before speeding towards its target missed it by about 24 miles (40 km). An ICBM is a long-range missile that leaves the earth's atmosphere before re-entry, pursuing a parabolic trajectory towards its target. In contrast, a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System sends missiles through a partial orbit around the earth to strike targets from an unexpected direction.
References: Carnegie Endowment, BBC, R.World
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