to believe all of this.
The word "hypersonic" is more often used in a misleading way than it is proper.
If we go by the common definition, the German V2 was also "hypersonic". So always keep that in mind.
There are very difficult thresholds to cross at this level, and what is hypersonic at 50K ft altitude is far from it at sea level.
The Russians also have a very well documented history of bullshitting about their equipment regarding their abilities.
The missile they are referring to has been around for 6-7 years now at least. Now consider that we are also developing these vehicles and spending billions to do it, each copy costs so much, we wouldn't even think of launching one of them with a conventional warhead on it. That would be a stupid and irrational waste of resources.
So yes, it is a fast missile and I believe that is verified, but intercepting them is entirely possible, although not trivial.
If a vehicle is travelling at the claimed speeds, it can no longer communicate due to the plasma it generates around itself, not at all unlike space vehicle re-entry conditions. In other words, it can't see where it's going at those speeds, and in turn, cannot scan for threats in order evade. Not to mention, executing an evasive maneuver at those speeds would most certainly result in the destruction of the vehicle.
All it would take really is a trajectory path calculation (since it can't really see where it's going, it is pre-programmed), and a scatter type defensive munition. Think of a small bb hitting that thing at Mach 5-7. Kinetic energy is calculated with 2 basic variables, mass and speed. Energy released can be doubled by doubling the mass of the projectile (the bb), but speed on the other hand, is a factor squared. So double the speed, quadruple the energy delivery. In other words, just about any impact of small debris at that speed can destroy the vehicle. All you have to do is create a cloud of garbage in it's path and it's all over but the crying.
Of course, this minimizes the challenges of locating these defenses all over the place in order to intercept the incoming projectiles, but the answer to "is it possible" is a definitive yes. It just won't be cheap.
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