The US Will Soon Make Putin’s Ultimate Weapon Useless
The Tranche 1 Tracking Layer could turn the tables.
There is a terrifying new weapon on modern battlefields, hypersonic missiles. These weapons travel so fast that the air in front of them turns into radio-absorbing plasma, making them virtually invisible to radar. Even if missile defences do identify a hypersonic missile, their roughly Mach 10 velocity means interceptor missiles can’t catch up to them. This means that no one, not even the US, has the technology to defend against hypersonic missiles. This is a huge problem, as both Russia and China are arming themselves with these deadly weapons. However, the US has a solution, a constellation of missile-tracking satellites known as Tranche 1 Tracking Layer. But how does this work? And will it level the playing field?
**Since writing, Ukraine has shot down 6 Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missions using US-supplied Patriot missile defence systems — however, this does not prove that the Patriot is a reliable hypersonic missile defence system as stated in my previous article here**
Let’s start with what is a hypersonic missile. Hypersonic just refers to something that travels over Mach 5, which is around 3,800 mph. Many standard missiles can reach this speed at some point in the flight path, but that doesn’t make them a…
