Hypersonic Boost-glide Systems and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles: Challenges for the Missile Technology Control Regime

Coverage of selected items required for hypersonic missile systems 16 by the MTCR Equipment, Software and Technology Annex 5. Recommendations 22 About the authors 25 Acknowledgements The authors thank the German Federal Foreign Office and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs for their generous funding, which enabled the production of this paper as part of the research project ‘Quo vadis. [...] A key aspect of these efforts focuses on the non-proliferation of hypersonic missile technology, to slow the spread of complete hypersonic missile systems and the required technology and to prevent destabilizing arms race dynamics that may arise from the perceived capabil- ities of these missiles. [...] This is particularly significant as the restrictive- ness and extent of some of the controls on related dual-use goods and technologies are linked to whether the complete system is covered by category I of the annex. [...] Definitional ambiguities concerning HGVs and HCMs The definitional issues pertaining to speed, trajectory and manoeuvrability of hyper- sonic missile systems, and the spectrum of these capabilities that exists across differ- ent missile types, means that there is some ambiguity over the coverage of hypersonic boost-glide systems and specifically HGVs by the MTCR annex. [...] In the case of ballistic missiles with separating re-entry vehicles, the entire weight of a re-entry vehicle, munitions and other components count towards the 500 kg threshold.50 For cruise missiles, only the munitions, separating mech- anisms and some other elements such as countermeasures are counted towards the pay load weight parameter.51 Depending on the specific design of the vehicle and the.