To counter the threat of hypersonic missiles, France and the United States have launched a cooperation program to detect these weapons and neutralize them in record time.
Is France really powerless against the hypersonic missiles that Russia is testing? Not quite according to a source of the General Staff who revealed the details of a long-remained secret exercise.
“A year ago, off the New Hebrides, a French frigate fired an Aster 30 at a missile that was going at Mach 3,” the source said.
The French Navy verifies that its combat systems are capable of dealing with new weapons. But above all, they require the adoption of new strategies to detect and intercept them.
“At Mach 3, a missile travels 30 nautical miles per minute, or 60 kilometers per minute. Between the radar detection range, the time the system says it has seen a craft and the decision to fire, the delays in reaction can be counted in seconds”, explains this source.
A cooperative commitment
To deal with these new weapons, France and the United States have committed themselves to a cooperative engagement system.
“We are in the process of building the first bricks of this strategy. The goal is to ensure that the one who fires is not necessarily the one who detected. As a result, the naval force network sees further and reacts more quickly”, continues this source.
Until now, with a link 16, the NATO standard one, the systems can only exchange between themselves what they see and formally recognize.
“By doing naval cooperative surveillance, we will allow the radars to talk to each other on a technical level. A first radar sees a flying object which could for example not be a seagull, but a second radar detects that this same object is moving Mach 2. This early sharing of information gives us about ten nautical miles of additional notice,” explains our source.
Finally, still according to this specialist, a missile reaches its target by optical, infrared or electromagnetic guidance. “It is deceiving or it is scrambling. It is not because a gun goes to Mach 3 that it will kill everyone”.
These parades aim in particular to protect themselves from the Zirkon cruise missiles that Russia is testing. With a range of around 1,000 kilometres, they must equip surface ships and submarines of the Russian fleet. Tests have already been carried out with submersibles while diving. Russia would also have hypersonic ballistic missiles “Kinjal” which would have been used against during the offensive against Ukraine.
