gambit
PROFESSIONAL
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2009
- Messages
- 28,569
- Reaction score
- 148
- Country
- Location
The advantages are that in atmospheric flights, we can exploit aerodynamic forces to reduce the need for fuel and lower flight altitude means reduce odds of detection to compress response time by the defense.I don't understand exactly what advantage this has over ballistic missiles. It might be air breathing and thus more fuel efficient, but I still would doubt that it would be cheaper than a ballistic missile. I expect it would be difficult to intercept this missile, but it's equally difficult to intercept ballistic missiles.
If you look at long range radar stations designed to detect ballistic missiles, you will see their radar antennas DO NOT look up but rather at the horizon. All bodies at altitude will do what is called a 'horizon break' in their trajectories from the defender's perspective. That is when the flying body can be seen by the defender like a sunrise. The problem here is that with an orbital altitude, the time between 'horizon break' and the response time can be in minutes versus a body that is flying at 10km altitude, for example, that will produce a response time of seconds, which is not much of a response time at all.
You can see that example with this radar horizon calculator...
http://radarproblems.com/calculators/horizon.htm
Bottom line is this: The shorter the radar horizon, the better for the offense.