Given the fluid nature of the world’s flashpoints, making predictions about what is to come is a brave gambit, even if it is increasingly obvious that we are undergoing a transition to something very different to the world that was created in the late 1940s. The 20th century is definitively ending in this era, in the sense of a world order and the institutions that underpinned it becoming defunct. 

And it feels naive to think that multipolarity means there will eventually be a smooth transition to a new set of institutions to reflect a new power balance. The evidence of the past few years suggests that there will instead be struggles between great powers that will be aggressive and violent, and of a different form to the Cold War. 

Against this backdrop, it is important to consider what this means for the advance of science and technology. The present wars are highlighting yet again that military technology tends to be in the vanguard of human technical ingenuity. 

They are also revealing about the different strategic bets that are being made in this regard. We are far from a final accounting in these ongoing struggles, which could continue for decades. But what appears to be significant at this moment in time is the possession of stand-off weaponry, which is far more widely available today than has previously been the case, and which is also being wielded by non-state actors. 

Even though it can be argued quantity has a quality all of its own when it comes to projecting military explosives, as the Russia-Ukraine War has seen an updated version of the kind of industrial warfare that pertained in the 20th century, this is also where much of the most significant technological strides are presently being made. And at the apex of this military technology stands the hypersonic missile.

The ability to fire projectiles at multiple times the speed of sound confers the ability to penetrate air defences. Especially hypersonic glide vehicles that can manoeuvre and alter their trajectory after they’ve been launched. They are arguably rendering the aircraft carrier obsolete.

Hypersonic missiles, which travel at speeds greater than Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound), require advanced engineering solutions to respond to the extreme conditions experienced during hypersonic flight. These challenges include extreme heat generated by air friction, shock waves that affect the aerodynamics, the need for advanced propulsion systems to sustain hypersonic speeds, ensuring accurate navigation and the ability for course correction at high speeds, and designing robust warheads. That is far from a comprehensive list and doesn’t even touch on the challenges associated with integrating all of these elements. 

Within this milieu, the Oreshnik, a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), stands as a notable exemplar. It exceeds speeds of Mach 10 (making it highly difficult to intercept), it can carry six to eight warheads that can each strike different targets, and has a range of up to 5,000 km, can carry both nuclear and conventional payloads, and is highly manoeuvrable. 

For Europe, with its heavily depleted ammunition stocks and having spent several decades in a process of deindustrialisation, and now with a potentially less reliable partner across the Atlantic, we are looking at a continent in a shaky strategic position. Shaky enough to merit a period of hard thinking and evaluation, but that is something to leave for another post. 

It is also worth meditating on the potential civilian applications of hypersonic missile technology, which in time will surely extend beyond the obvious benefits supporting rapid transport around the globe. This computational modelling and materials research involved in developing these systems is definitively at the bleeding edge of R&D. It would be nice if military imperatives weren’t so crucial to advancing civilian technology, as it has been since possibly forever, but such is human nature.