There's no need for air breathing, or other, thrust for this. Maneuverable reentry vehicles have existed for quite a while. We can call them hypersonics for nationalistic reasons but the speed is only achieved after the atmosphere and very briefly in it going down.

If the goal is to avoid looking like an ICBM trajectory to avoid the other nation states thinking it's a nuclear attack then it makes sense. But it's still not achieveable for long periods of flight so the ICBM is required regardless.

> "[Hypersonic] Maneuverable reentry vehicles have existed for quite a while"

I keep reading this comment on HN. It's like saying "What's the deal with Chuck Yaeger breaking the sound barrier, we've had supersonic bullets that do that for a long time". There is zero overlap between the two.

Maneuverable reentry vehicles can wobble around a bit while falling, whereas the point of hypersonic weapons is maneuverability for a significant part of the trajectory.

Not just maneuvearable, but actively maneuverable, aka able to sense some type of input inside the cone of visibly superheated air around it. This is different than an ICBM RV drifting around with RCS before re-entry or a cruise missile idling about before it's accelerated to attack speed.

Unrelated but that's also why any talk of stealth with hypersonic is stupid; everything around the projectile is going to give off more of a signature than the projectile itself

> Not just maneuvearable, but actively maneuverable, aka able to sense some type of input inside the cone of visibly superheated air around it.

For ICBMs these are called MARV warheads and they were first demonstrated in the early 1980s, and every major power has had them, though many don't have any operational now.

You do not need to manuver to hit a carrier? 35mph is "slow" relative to a missle, and a carrier takes literally minutes to speed up / slow down / turn. You can math out and shoot a literal cannonball and hit a moving 35MPH carrier within a few inches...

Two problems:

First, you need accurate, current location info on the carrier. That's not easy.

Second, you need something that can launch your cannonball. That's not easy, either, because if you're within cannonball range of a carrier, then you are within range of an enormous amount of return fire from the carrier strike group, and you're dead long before you get a chance to fire your cannonball.

The problem is getting current targeting information to a launcher that's 1000 miles away from the carrier, and then the carrier still moves enough to really matter during the time that your missile travels that 1000 miles.

Using satellite imagery or a swarm of drones would make it easy to know and predict the rough location of a carrier within a couple of miles

Where does that "swarm“ of drones come from? Any drones cheap enough to use in a swarm have very limited endurance and weak sensors. Possibly useful in the littorals, but a total joke for blue water operations.

Satellites are limited and impossible to hide. The carrier strike force knows exactly when they are in view of an adversary's reconnaissance satellite. In any future major conflict the satellites will be the first casualties. There is a very active arms race in anti-satellite weapons.

> swarm of drones

That swarm of drones will almost certainly be spotted by the AEGIS air defense network (the cruisers and destroyers that escort the carrier), and shot down. Cruisers and Destroyers serve as the "screening" role for the Carrier, you will always see the cruiser/destroyers first in the Carrier Strike Group no matter what angle you approach from (and vice versa, they will see you first before you get to the Carrier).

This gives the cruisers/destroyers a chance to shoot down the drone swarm (or whatever air platform you're using). If its too much for the sea-based air defense systems to handle, they'll radio for assistance from the Carrier and F18 / F35 jets will be dispatched, beyond the horizon, before the swarm even sees the Carrier or pinpoints its location.

That's the difficulty of fighting a Carrier. Not the Carrier itself per se, but the entire team that works together. AEGIS cruisers have the best radar systems the US Navy can offer, and their large power plants can make their RADAR systems more sensitive / higher power than anything you can possibly hope to put into a drone.

Well, let's see. Say "hypersonic" is 4000 MPH. 1000 miles/4000 MPH is 1/4 hour. At 35 miles/hour, in that time the carrier can move 8.75 miles.

If it's traveling more-or-less in a straight line, you can predict where it will be to within a couple of miles. If not...

> and a carrier takes literally minutes to speed up / slow down / turn

No it doesn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-Q8P049-2Q

The US Aircraft carriers are powered by two nuclear powerplants, with massive rudders/turbines that can propel, accelerate, and move the craft at surprising speeds.

In fact, one of the problems of the US Supercarriers is that at these high speeds / acceleration, an unprepared sailor can fall off the ship. Its legitimately one of the most common ways to die on a US Supercarrier.

That's not how it works. The launching platform will never have a sufficiently precise target track to hit a carrier with an unguided weapon from any significant distance. Flight time will be at least several minutes so even a slight course deviation is enough to generate a miss. The new generation of hypersonic missiles will have some onboard sensors and ability to seek out a target, but only within narrow limits.

> avoid AEGIS missile defense and attack a US Carrier moving at 35MPH

They want a propaganda tool. As the other comment mentions, manoeuvrability is cheap. And projectile defenses’ vulnerability to swarming is well know.

But launching tens of thousands of explosive-laden drones sounds low tech, so we get Xi and Putin touting hypersonics and our military-industrial complex smelling money in the counter.