“I could see pop out winglets/control surfaces, deployed after reentry.”
At supersonic speeds? They’d have to be damned robust to survive and be of any use at all. And how much control could they really have? The friction involved would light them up like road flares to IR sensors.
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“The friction involved would light them up like road flares to IR sensors.”
RVs already look like meteors from reentry friction. They reenter at around Mach 15 or higher.
It wouldn’t take much to throw off our interceptors, which assume a straight ballistic trajectory and have to impact the target directly - no explosion.
Seems to me the warhead would already be lit up from reentry. As for wings, even the hypersonic test bird has wings. Russia does have titanium. We had to buy it from them to build the blackbird. And then there’s ceramic coatings
As for how much they could control? Don’t know. But even small adjustments could be enough to make it hard to hit.
Hey I’m not an AS engineer, so what do I know.
Lifting body style reentry vehicle and micro thrusters.
Even up high you're going to generate a lot of heat and more than likely scrub off any ablative RAM coating. So you're still going to stand out. Maneuvering scrubs energy. You'll also be well within the engagement envelopes of standard SAMs. These are relatively cheap and plentiful compared to missile defense interceptors. You can volley fire a dozen SAMs at these things. Your typical SAM is designed to intercept maneuvering targets and thus can pull tremendous Gs itself turning to the intercept point.
Is this a threat? Sure. Is it unbeatable? Not in the least. Just a different set of problems, all solvable.