Page 98 - Australian Defence Magazine Sep-Oct 2022

98 LAND WARFARE GROUND BASED AIR DEFENCE
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
“The Air 6502 Phase 1 project will provide a deployable, Ground-Based Medium Range Air Defence capability de- signed to deter, deny and/or defeat air and missile threats to the Joint Force and valuable assets,” the RFP stated.
Early work includes the creation of Functional Perfor- mance Specification documents and risk mitigation plan- ning. ADM understands that all three armed services are well represented in the Integrated Missile Defence (IMD) office in the Department of Defence; and Chief Informa- tion Officer Group (CIOG) and the office of the Vice Chief of the Defence Force (VCDF) are across C4ISR decisions and therefore play a role in Air 6502.
ADM understands that the intended overlap between Air 6500 and Air 6502 means bidders have proposed solutions for the latter that are ‘evolved’ from the former. Although no company has publicly disclosed the nature of its response to the 6502 RFP, this would likely mean adding effectors and launchers rather than changing the core C2 system.
On publication of the RFP, then-Minister for Defence Industry Melissa Price said that Defence was also seek- ing information on how bidders would use the Sovereign Guided Weapons Enterprise to keep munitions production for the medium-range GBAD in Australia.
sponsored by Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, the strengths of hypersonic missiles also provide the keys to their defeat.
Of particular importance is space situational awareness – the ability to identify and track missiles in flight: “The single most important program element for hypersonic de- fence is a resilient and persistent space sensor layer capable of observing, classifying, and tracking missile threats of all types, azimuths, and trajectories,” Karako and Dahlgren wrote. “The second is a glide-phase interceptor.”
“A comprehensive approach may benefit by supplement- ing hit-to-kill intercept with area-wide effectors, including high-powered microwave systems, twenty-first century ver- sions of flak, and other means to target vulnerabilities of the hypersonic flight regime.”
Hypersonic missiles remain subject to the same laws of phys- ics as everything else: speed comes at the expense of manoeu- vrability. The faster something is going, the harder it is to turn.
Building increased manoeuvrability into military doc- trine may be a relatively simple first line of defence. In the same way that self-propelled artillery use ‘shoot-and-scoot’ tactics to avoid counter-battery fire, warships and other high-value assets might use a similar tactic to avoid hy- personic counterfire. For example, a missile travelling at Mach 9 takes 33 seconds to travel 100 kilometres; a ship moving at 20 knots could travel 340 metres in that time, far enough from its original position to reach safety.
While Air 6503 may initially look to combine the situ- ational awareness of Air 6500 with effectors such as hit- to-kill intercept and wide-area flak to engage hypersonic threats, the program might evolve to include emergent di- rected energy technology, which could either disrupt the guidance systems inside hypersonic missiles or overheat the missile to explosion before it hits the target.
But any solution must overcome the age-old problem of volume: it’s easier to simply shoot 100 missiles than it is to shoot them all down.
A partial answer to this comes through resilience: a greater number of smaller targets, hardened infrastruc- ture, and distributed forces. And as the Ukrainian Armed Forces are demonstrating, resilience is key. ■
ABOVE: A mock-up of an AIM-120 AMRRAM missile on display as part of the Land 19 announcement
“IT’S EASIER TO SIMPLY SHOOT 100 MISSILES THAN IT IS TO SHOOT THEM ALL DOWN”
“The Request for Proposal will improve Defence’s understanding of the capability and likely availability and timelines of current and poten- tial future systems that can meet Australia’s requirements,” she said. “We are also seeking to understand how Australian industry can lever- age the Sovereign Guided Weapons
Enterprise in their proposals to harness existing or emerg- ing local munitions production capabilities.”
In April 2022, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin were cho- sen as ‘initial industry partners’ for the Sovereign Guided Weapons Enterprise (more accurately known as the Sover- eign Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise, or GWEO). Those companies are currently the largest sup- pliers of guided weapons to Defence (and Raytheon is the largest manufacturer of guided weapons globally). It is not clear to what extent the progress of GWEO has contrib- uted to planning for Air 6502.
HYPERSONIC AIR DEFENCE
Another air defence program on the horizon is Air 6503, an early-stage program investigating potential defences against the emerging hypersonic missile threat. Little de- tail is available on this program, other than the fact it exists and no technology solution has been decided so far.
Hypersonic missiles generally fall into two categories: boost-glide and scramjet. Boost-glide missiles use a booster rocket to achieve hypersonic speed and are then released to glide towards the target (and begin slowing down upon re- lease from the booster rocket). Scramjets also use a booster rocket to get up to speed, but then utilise an air-breathing engine to maintain that speed to target.
According to Tom Karako and Masao Dahlgren of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in a report
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