Hypersonic missiles are meant to be able to maneuver at high speeds to make interception by anti-missile batteries (like the Patriot) ineffective. Their high speed makes response time minimal. Ballistic missiles follow an arching path, which is relatively easy to track and defend if you have the technology. Cruise missiles fly extremely low and slow, and depend on terrain avoidance maneuvers to avoid radar. The US has developed, and is starting to deploy directed energy weapons (lasers) to counter hypersonic missiles. We already have some in the field being tested on ships, and on vehicle sized platforms. The challenge is to shrink the size and control the heat, but we have supposedly overcome that by operating several lasers in tandem on a sort of daisy chain so that each smaller laser dissipates heat much better than one large laser.
From what I’ve read about the energy weapons, they’re the real deal. I suppose you have to be in sight line though. Unless they are deployed on satellites.
We should just rebuild Tesla’s death ray and destroy a Chinese empty city to let them know we mean business.