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I don't think this is true, certainly not as a general statement - for instance, the Oreshnik is known for a top speed "above Mach 10" and generally speaking the top speed is not in the terminal phase, but rather in the midcourse where the atmosphere is thinner. CBO suggests that hypersonic missiles may be traveling below Mach 5 in the terminal phase. This source gives a terminal velocity under Mach 3 for ballistic missiles generally. These lower speeds are particularly likely if the missiles are maneuvering at all. If the missiles are not maneuvering, the higher speed is offset somewhat by the vulnerability to pretty much anything that can react fast enough and shoot at them.
Right, on a ship it is part of a layered defense against large salvos. If they had run the simulation against a salvo size of one, the savings would look different: they estimate each HPV costing $100,000, with an ESSM (the low-end missile) costing over $600,000. So if your options are a five-round burst from your 5-inch or a single ESSM, you're looking at a 20% saving to deal with a single leaker.
That's because in the scenario, the HVP was being used as part of a layered defense against extremely large salvo sizes. Ballistic missiles are rarely if ever fired 25 at a time against single-point surface targets. This is much more relevant for ships, but if you are, say, Ukraine, your tactical question isn't to how to stop 25 ballistic missiles from striking an artillery battery, it's how to stop a single ballistic missile from striking it (or how to stop a salvo from hitting a number of different targets). If "guided flak guns" can do the trick, it makes ballistic missiles less cost effective.
And if you can put that on a mobile system, the effects can be pretty large. Supposing hypothetically that you're a country with partial satellite targeting data, looking to hit 100 semi-mobile targets before they move. Your enemy has four batteries (40x) interceptors. You need to fire 140 missiles to hit 100 target fairly reliably (a few targets might escape by luck). But now supposing hypothetically that your enemy has replaced all of those batteries with forty road-mobile point-defense systems that can intercept a single ballistic missile at a time reliably. Now you need to fire 200 missiles to reliably hit ~all 100 targets, because you are not certain where the point-defense systems are and need to double-tap all targets. Basically you put the two-interceptors-per-incoming shoe back on the other foot.
This isn't exactly a realistic scenario, just an illustration, but I think you see my point.
Now, I don't think there's an easy solution to ballistic missiles. I'm just not convinced that they will be as relatively effective as they are now forever, or that missile defense is a losing proposition. I agree that if you cram enough missiles into a salvo against a single target, "the missile will always get through," but if you're forcing your enemy to shoot salvos of ballistic missiles against tactical targets, you're much more likely to be on the correct size of the cost curve.
Speeds can be possibly below Mach 5, yes, it depends on the IRBM in question. If you believe the Ukrainian reports on the Oreshnik, it has a terminal velocity of Mach 11, well within the hypersonic range.
But even if the ballistic missile in question travels at only supersonic speeds in its terminal phase, HVPs still can't hit them. Note that due to the limitations of HVP the study here does not even bother to engage it with weapons that come close to the speed of IRBMs, note in this model the offence is utilising anti-ship missiles that are "subsonic and supersonic", not hypersonic. The authors go so far as to state "Due to the inability for the HVP to engage supersonic targets, an HVP-only configuration for anti-missile defense is not recommended" and therefore limit HVP engagement only to the subsonic targets in the simulation.
Yes, you're potentially capable of saving large percentages when you're looking at small salvo sizes that the HVP can hit. This is not always the situation you are looking at, and you cannot utilise HVP against supersonic missiles, as admitted by the study itself. It may be able to be used instead of a more expensive missile, but if that salvo size of one is travelling at a high enough speed, using HVP to intercept it is not prudent, and you cannot rely on the assumption that the offence will use a missile the HVP can deal with.
Ultimately, the end effect of utilising HVPs like that is that you are capable of making the enemy waste some resources by forcing greater reliance on supersonic missiles in certain specific contexts where it would not otherwise have been used. It's an interesting technology capable of subtly shifting the balance of power in certain contexts, but I don't find myself particularly convinced that it will revolutionise missile defence wholesale or shift the cost balance anywhere near parity.
I don't think missile defence is intractable, but it is very difficult.
The study says, on the very first page, "the HVP is capable of supersonic speeds and mid-air course correction to intercept incoming ballistic missiles as well as engaging other targets as an offensive weapon" and BAE's fact sheet, linked to here, says that ballistic missile defense is in the mission set.
The study states that they only modeled using the HVP to engage subsonic targets "[b]ased on sponsor and stakeholder feedback" and as you point out the study did not model ballistic missile targets at all, focusing on more conventional anti-ship missiles. It's possible this means
Either way, I think you are correct that the capability for the HVP to destroy ballistic missiles is not yet present, and may never be present. But on the flip side, I don't think it's impossible that it is eventually operationalized, or for a similar capability to be developed.
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