Could cheap Tomahawk missiles be better than hypersonics?

The most commonly cited selling point for hypersonic missiles is that they can’t be stopped by existing air defense systems, but that argument itself comes with its own problems.

As we’ve discussed on Sandboxx News before, nations have a tendency to overestimate the efficacy of their missile defense systems in public discussion for good reason. Deterrence is a game of managing perceptions, so you’ll be hard-pressed to find a nation making statements to the global media about just how easy it already is to get missiles past their defenses.

In April of 2018, the U.S., U.K., and France fired 105 subsonic cruise missiles at targets in Syria tied to a chemical weapon attack on civilians that occurred the week prior.

The U.S. and its allies reported the attack was an overwhelming success, but Russia countered in the press, arguing that they had managed to intercept more than 70 of the inbound weapons. Intelligence gathered in the days that followed substantiated America’s claims, with reports from the three nations showing that Syrian forces fired more than 40 interceptors at the inbound missiles without successfully destroying a single one.

But even if Russia were telling the truth, it would still mean their air defense systems let 30 or more slow-moving weapons cruise on by to find their targets. The majority of the weapons used in this strike were Tomahawks that travel at around 550 miles per hour — more than 3,000 miles per hour slower than the slowest hypersonic weapons.

Related: As Arctic tensions heat up, DARPA wants to control ice formations like Princess Elsa

Even if modern air defense systems like Russia’s S-400 or America’s Patriot missile system, were magically capable of having their interceptors find their targets 100 percent of the time, all it would take to defeat them would be launching more missiles than they have interceptors for. And that’s where the question of cost comes in.

America’s subsonic Tomahawk cruise missiles come in a variety of forms, but the most modern iterations ring it at around $2 million each. Contrast that against the $100 million unit cost of hypersonic missiles and the problems become evident: You could launch 50 Tomahawks at a target for the same price as a single hypersonic weapon.

Related: The complete list of US hypersonic missile tests, successes and failures

The math associated with intercepting a single missile moving at speeds above Mach 5 is too complex for systems to manage today, but the fact of the matter is that a high volume of lower-cost weapons could prove just as effective as a low volume of high-cost ones in a large number of mission sets, and these lower-cost weapons are already in service today.

The only situations where hypersonic missiles could offer real tactical value are when the target itself is more expensive, important, or time-consuming to replace than a hypersonic missile that could potentially come with a $100 million price tag itself. While these targets would exist in a large-scale conflict with a nation like China, they would be relatively few.

Hypersonic missiles do have legitimate wartime applications, but the truth is, cheaper, slower, and older missiles can often do the trick just as well — or maybe even better.

Feature Image: A Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) is launched from the guided missile cruiser USS Cape St. George. Cape St. George is operating in the eastern Mediterranean Sea conducting missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. (U.S. Navy photo by Intelligence Specialist 1st Class Kenneth Moll.)

Read more from Sandboxx News

• What kind of fighter could the latest military tech really build?
• Navy still pouring millions into shipboard laser weapon development
• Why does the media report on secretive defense programs? Should this tech be classified?
• Hypersonic weapons could rescue the Navy’s stealth destroyer
• Is the famous TB2 Bayraktar the best drone in Ukraine?