Eli Sanchez | Science & Global Security
Abstract
This study assesses the vulnerability of silo-based ICBMs to conventional prompt strike weapons. The study’s focus is on hypersonic boost-glide weapons, but its results are applicable to other hypersonic vehicles such as ballistic missile reentry vehicles. It finds that, if US hypersonic weapons achieve accuracies consistent with stated design goals, they would be able to defeat silo-based ICBMs with comparable efficacy to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Because these weapons do not follow ballistic trajectories for most of flight, the United States has argued they are not subject to numerical limits under New START, a position it could maintain under future arms control agreements employing similar counting rules. Thus, US precision-guided, conventional hypersonic weapons programs offer the United States a plausible means of expanding its counterforce capabilities unencumbered by limits imposed under nuclear arms control treaties. These programs, if pursued without constraints, are therefore likely to undermine great power strategic stability.
From Science & Global Security, Taylor & Francis