Hypersonic Missiles -- FGFD: Field Guide to Flying Death

 

Hypersonic missiles recently exploded into the news when China tested their own version of the WMD du jour.

Speed is just one of many ways to classify missiles: from the subsonic Tomahawk cruise missile flying 500mph to the ICBMs breaking free of earth's gravity at more than 15,000 mph.   Hypersonic missiles fall in between at fives times the speed of sound around 4,000mph.  

As with aircraft, speed is not the only measure of missiles. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are very fast, but since ballistic means without power, they follow a very predictable parabolic flight/glide path to target.  They accelerate to 15,000 mph to break free of the atmosphere, then coast over the the north pole to their final destination. The intercept path is very predictable.  

At the other end of the scale, a Tomahawk (or other) subsonic cruise missile flies about the same speed as an airliner at around 500mph. They are very small, very light aircraft that are flown to their target. They can evade, maneuver and fly just feet above the ground and hit a target so accurately they can be flown into a particular car in parking lot.  

Hypersonic missiles fly five times the speed of sound, in the range of 4,000 mph, in powered flight. They can fly high, low, maneuver, and evade just like a subsonic cruise missile, but fly from New York to Los Angeles in 45 minutes.  Planes are very hard to shoot down. A hypersonic missile flies almost twice as fast as the Sidewinder air-to-air missile.  It flies faster than the bullets from every US Army rifle and machine gun, faster than 30mm cannon rounds from the gatling gun on the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack fighter.  

If China has operational hypersonic missiles, as recent news reports suggest, they could threaten other nations, including us, with dangerous, nuclear capable missiles.  

If Taiwan becomes Crimea Part II, hypersonic missiles may be the threat that keeps America from defending a nation that has been very loyal to us.  President Obama did nothing to stop Putin from seizing Crimea or invading eastern Ukraine.  President Trump sold out the Kurds in Syria after one phone call from the Turkish President.  Hypersonic missiles might seal the deal that puts Taiwan on the same path as Hong Kong.  

Other entires in Field Guide to Flying Death:

Cruise Missiles

Artillery 

Apache Helicopter 

Mutually Assured Destruction 

Gunships 

Armor piercing ammo 

And then there's the Sam Fender song, Hypersonic Missile

Field Guide to Flying Death: With Gunships, Slower is Better

 

AC130 Gunship in the air and on the ground 

Air support for troops in the Vietnam War began with the latest and fastest jets of the 1960s. Whether they we land-based or carrier based, these jets could swoop in with bombs, missiles and guns. But then they were gone.  High performance jets can't hang around. And they are not made to go slow. 

F4 Phantoms would lower their landing gear on close-support missions to get their weapons on target.  

The first solution to the problem was to go retro:  The Douglas A4 Skyraider.

Developed during World War II, the Skyraider first flew in March 1945. The war ended before it could be deployed in significant numbers.  By 1967 the design was far out date in the jet world, but the A4 could fly for more than six hours with its basic fuel load. 

The single-engine propellor-driven aircraft carried four 20mm cannons with 200 rounds of ammo for each gun and could carry 8,000 pounds of bombs, rockets and any other ordnance that could be hung on its wide wings.  In a ground support role, the Skyraider could attack a target and wait in the area to see and respond to the enemy's next move.  

In the same way, the C130 Hercules can stay over the target area carrying tons of ammo for miniguns and cannons up to and including a 105mm howitzer.  The newest model reported in Task and Purpose now has a laser capable of disabling trucks.  

This four-engine tortoise in a world of supersonic hares can loiter of hours over a battle supporting the troops on the ground long after jets have sped away.  

 

Field Guide to Flying Death: Dumb Bombs, Russia and Syria

US Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortress dropping "dumb" bombs 

on Germany in World War II

 During World War II and for decades after, "dumb" or unguided bombs were the only way to put explosives on target from the air.  Beginning in the Gulf War, America and other nations started using "smart" or guided bombs.  

In 1999 when American B-2s bombed Belgrade, Pentagon spokespersons said they could not only hit a specific building, but put a bomb in a specific doorway of a building. 

Beginning in September 2015, Russian strategic bombers flew from Ossetia near the Republic of Georgia in Southern Russia and bombed targets in Syria.  They claimed to be fighting ISIS, but hit civilian targets, causing thousands of casualties. The Russian bombers dropped "dumb" bombs.  Various news outlets at the time speculated that the Russians used dumb bombs because these bombs are much cheaper than guided weapons. Up to 100 times cheaper.  The Miami Herald wrote this.

From top: Tu-95, Tu-160 and Tu-22 Strategic Bombers

In his book The Road to Unfreedom Timothy Snyder said Russia began bombing Syria three weeks after Germany announced it would take in a half million refugees. 

"Russian aircraft dropped non-precision ("dumb") bombs from high altitudes. ... Russia was not targeting ISIS bases. Human rights organizations reported the Russian bombing of mosques, clinics, hospitals, refugee camps, water treatment plants and cities in general." (pages 198-199)

Dumb bombs made the refugee crisis worse. Putin's goal, according to Snyder, was to destabilize Europe. By making the refugee crisis worse in Europe, the Russian bombing campaign played to the xenophobia of the fastest-rising candidate in the American Presidential election. That candidate would eventually take the side of Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies.

The dumb bombs were dropped by a man with a smart plan.  

Field Guide to Flying Death, Armor-Piercing Ammo

A Soviet-built tank destroyed by an armor piercing round.

The tank in the picture above was destroyed by a cannon round that had no explosive charge.  A solid shot hit the turret of this Soviet T-72 main battle tank and destroyed it, turning the approximately ten-ton-turret on its side.  

The round that destroyed the 41-ton tank was a 25mm tungsten-carbide dart fired from a 120mm smooth-bore cannon in an American M1A1 main battle tank. The 25mm round is wrapped in 120mm casing that breaks away just past the end of the gun.  Because the 25mm round is propelled with the force of a 120mm charge, the tungsten-carbide dart flies at more than a mile per second to its target.  

The round makes a small hole when it it hits, but the mile-per-second impact can punch a hole in armor more than a foot thick at a mile or more of distance.  The impact turns the armor on the inside of the tank into hot shrapnel that kills the crew and destroys the tank.  At close ranges in can flip the turret over as in the photo above or even take the turret off a tank altogether.  

When compared to firing explosive ammo at a tank, the solid-shot APDS (Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot) round is also more accurate.  The trajectory of an APDS round is so flat that point blank for a tank firing the round is one kilometer. 

If cannon ammo was a football, the path of an APDS round is like a screen pass thrown by a strong quarterback--it flies flat and straight to the receiver. A high-explosive round flies like a 70-yard touchdown pass that rises steadily up for sixty yards before dropping into the receiver's arms.   

I was a tank commander, before electronic computers became part of armored warfare. When my gunner fired at a tank or tank-sized target less than a kilometer away, he simply had to put his crosshairs on the target and fire. 

Field Guide to Flying Death: Cruise Missiles

A British Tornado fighter plane carrying four 

Storm Shadow Cruise Missiles  

Cruise missiles are actually a pilotless jet plane that flies to its target and explodes instead of landing.  Cruise missiles, like the Tomahawk and Storm Shadow missiles the U.S., U.K. and France fired at Syria recently, have jet engines and are in powered flight from launch to target.  

Rocket-Powered Missiles

Most modern missiles are rocket powered. They launch, burn their solid or liquid fuel in the first few seconds or minutes of the flight, and then follow a ballistic path to target—they fly where gravity and air resistance says metal darts coasting at thousands of miles per hour through air will go. They are thrust to a speed of one thousand to several thousand miles per hour then coast to their target using a guidance that steers the missile while it coasts through the air at very high speed. 

Cruise Missiles 

A Cruise missile doesn’t coast through the air, it flies.  Really it is a jet plane with a warhead as its only passenger.  So instead of blasting to thousands of miles an hour then coasting to target with little nudges of guidance, the Cruise missile flies. Because it flies, it can travel hundreds of miles a hundred feet or less above the ground over varied terrain. If the enemy tries to intercept a cruise missile, it can evade. The best fighter planes can only turn, dive or climb within the limits of the pilot’s brain and body. Somewhere above 5gs, even the most fit pilot will black out. The only limit on evasion by a Cruise missile is physics.  

The Storm Shadow and Tomahawk cruise missiles recently fired at Syria are subsonic, traveling 500 mph, or about the same speed as a commercial airliner. But a cruise missile is much harder to hit.  Flying close to the ground, following the terrain, makes it a tough target to hit. Most radar systems don't work that close to the ground.  

A Tomahawk Cruise Missile fired from a U.S. Navy Destroyer

Cruise missiles are so accurate they can hit a garage door after a 500-mile flight. The latest upgrades to the navigation systems make the targeting so good the 3,500-pound, 20-foot-long missile could probably hit the handle on a garage door. 

The Attack on Syria
In the most recent raid, all of the 103 missiles flew to target.  The Syrians claimed to have shot down 71 of the missiles.  NATO said Syria fired 40 missiles to no effect.  The Syrian claim is quite amazing, shooting down 71 missiles with only 40 interceptor missiles. The firing of the missiles was a demonstration of how adaptable these missiles are to different launch sites.  The Storm Shadow missiles were fired from French and British fighter planes. The U.S. Navy launched 57 Tomahawk cruise missiles from destroyers, cruisers and a submarine. The Air Force launched another 19 Tomahawks from B1-B Lancer bombers. 

Plans are underway for a rocket-assist package for the Tomahawk that would increase its speed to Mach 3, more than 2000 mph. Another innovation would be to use unburnt jet fuel as an explosive on impact.  Both innovations would make an already effective weapon even more deadly.

The occasional series "Field Guide to Flying Death" includes:

Artillery

Mutually Assured Destruction

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles

A-10 Thunderbolt II

Apache Longbow Attack Helicopter

Going Ballistic

Field Guide to Flying Death: MAD--Mutually Assured Destruction

The 60s was the heyday of “Mad Magazine” and MAD as the centerpiece of our Cold War strategy. MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction—became the plan to preserve the future of the world once the Soviet Union first tested a hydrogen bomb in 1953. 

The US and the Soviets amassed so many nuclear weapons during the 50s and 60s that using them could only result in the destruction of the entire world, as we know it. 

Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear war remains in the unthinkable category, but for the fundamentalists who see the world as the stage for their own particular apocalypse, the unthinkable is not so unthinkable.

The Russian Federation still controls thousands of nuclear weapons, but the danger has shifted away from the Cold War scenario of one of the superpowers attacking the other. Then the world worried about living under the threat of a Superpower nuclear war.  Now the world worries about nations and terrorists who don’t care about MAD setting off a nuke because they want to kill everybody who does not see the world as they do. 

In the midst of Cold War, Hannah Arendt wrote the book “On Revolutions” talking about the rise in revolutionary thinking from the Reformation through the American and French Revolutions to the permanent state of revolution that characterizes the modern world.  We can no longer rely on MAD to constrain the nuclear arsenal. Superpowers cannot divide the world into client states they can control. 

MAD will not protect us. The overwhelming nuclear arsenal we have is not a threat to someone happy to die to bring on their personal apocalypse, or to the thug in charge of North Korea who will happily sacrifice his people on the altar of his own ego. 

In a world of revolutions, our security agencies have to doggedly keep track of all existing nuclear weapons to make sure a terrorist never gets one. 

I liked the Cold War draft army I served in better than the current all-volunteer army and, I admit, I liked the MAD world a lot better than the current threat of a nuke delivered in a truck or a shipping container.  

Field Guide to Flying Death: ICBMs (InterContinentalBallistic Missiles)

LGM-30 Minuteman III ICBM.

The name of every type of missile describes how far it flies. So an ICBM, or Intercontinental Ballistic Missile can travel at least 3,400 miles carrying one or more warheads.  The standard American land-based ICBM, the Minuteman III, can fly 8,100 miles before releasing between one and a dozen individual warheads on target. 

Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota is the center of a missile launch area spread across the northern tier of America with 450 missiles carrying thousands of nuclear warheads. Minot also is home base for B-52 bombers, the main aircraft of the U.S. nuclear bombing force since the Eisenhower administration. 

Our arsenal of ICBMs and other nukes is so overwhelming, that if Putin used nuclear weapons and America responded in kind, the response would not likely come from the America’s land-based missile and bomber fleet.  Lurking in the oceans somewhere are Polaris submarines armed with Trident ICBMs are already on station, within range, waiting for the order to counter attack if Russia uses a nuclear weapon. 

My first job in the Cold War U. S. Air Force was live-fire testing of missiles.  I was assigned to the Aging and Surveillance branch of Air Force Systems Command on Hill Air Force Base, Utah.  

Every Thursday (except Thanksgiving and Christmas week) we unit fired one stage of a three-stage Minuteman missile.  The missiles were randomly selected.  They were pulled from their silo and shipped to Utah.  On the test range we froze them, baked them, put them in an altitude chamber, shook them and finally bolted them to a test pad and lit them up.  The test range was on the west side of the Great Salt Lake. On a clear day, you could see the cloud from firing in Ogden and Salt Lake City on the east side of the lake. 

We made sure the missiles were ready to fly to target. 

Armies win or lose wars for any number of reasons, but in modern war, the difference between winning and losing is often the reliability of the weapon.  Testing those missiles meant American missiles were ready. 

In 1973, at the same time I was on a team test firing every missile from Sidewinder wing rockets to ICBMs, Israel was hit with a surprise attack by three Arab armies who outnumbered Israel 100 to 1.  Israel repelled the invaders and won that war for many reasons.  But one reason was weapon readiness.

Taking tanks as an example, when Jordan rolled its Soviet-made tanks toward Israel across the Golan Heights, one in four of those tanks broke down before getting to the battle.  For every hundred Syrian tanks, only 75 made it to the fight.  Israeli tanks were ready to fight.  It really fucks up your war plans if a quarter of the tanks don’t even shop up, and it affects moral. The other crews are wondering if their tank will break down.  There are few targets easier to hit than a tank sitting still in a battlefield.

The missiles in U.S. submarines and silos are tested to make sure they are ready if needed.  As many failed North Korean tests have shown.  The short life of a launched ICBM is full of stress and strain. 

When Trident, Minuteman or other ICBMs launch, they begin the half-hour-long trip to a target on another continent or just very far away.  The three-stage Minuteman is in boost phase for five minutes, flying out of its silo on the North Dakota prairie to target. By then end of boost phase, the three-stages have burned their solid fuel and fallen away.  The warhead has accelerated from 0 to more than 15,000 miles per hour and has broken through earth’s atmosphere, flying in space.

In the launch phase, the rocket is subject to an average of 5gs of acceleration with two big jerks when one stage burns and falls away and the next stage lights up. The skin temperatures on the missile zoom up from 70 degrees to hundreds of degrees as speed approaches 15,000 mph. As the final stage burns and separates the warhead bursts out of the atmosphere into space, buffeting the warhead at the same time it rapidly cools as it leaves the atmosphere. 

The warhead is now in ballistic phase, coasting at 15,000+ mph to re-entry and target.  If the U.S. launched a Trident Missile from somewhere in the some ocean it would now be flying thousands of miles in 10 or 20 minutes toward its target. 

Less than 100 miles from target, the terminal or re-entry phase begins.  At this point the warhead drops back into the atmosphere heats to thousands of degrees from re-entry friction then delivers one or a dozen warheads to target.  The already baked and frozen warhead heads to thousands of degrees and shakes with hundreds of gs of vibration as it drops back into the upper atmosphere.

American missiles are thoroughly tested for this horrendous ride. Even so, solid fuel missiles are big cans of gunpowder designed to burn rather than explode.  I have seen, and almost been killed by, missiles that blow up when they were supposed to burn. But when they reach their target, ICBMs are apocalyptically deadly.

One Trident ICBM with eight warheads could turn Moscow into rubble. Each Polaris submarine can carry 24 Trident missiles.  Each of the multiple warheads are hundreds of times more powerful than the nukes dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.  And one submarine fully loaded with Trident missiles can deliver 192 warheads on target.

If these terrible missiles are ever launched, the destruction will be beyond anything in history. 

Field Guide to Flying Death: A Gun Wrapped with an Airplane

The slowest and most nearly perfect aircraft flown by the U.S. Air Force is the A-10 Thunderbolt II "Warthog" ground support fighter plane.  This amazing aircraft entered active service during my first Army enlistment in the 1970s and remains in service now--the most beloved of USAF planes by ground troops taking enemy fire.

Most fighter aircraft are designed first to fight other aircraft in air-to-air combat, but they also can support ground troops.  Anyone who has used a carving knife to serve butter, or a butter knife to carve a roast knows that specialized tools work the best.

The Warthog was designed for ground support. Nothing else. It's huge turbofan engines allow it to take off with more than 10 tons of rockets and missiles plus 1,200 rounds of cannon ammo for its legendary gun, but the Warthog has a top speed under 400mph and cruises not a lot faster than a World War II bomber.

The GAU-8/A 30mm Gatling Gun 

The "Hog" was designed to "loiter" over a target, firing its cannon, dropping bombs, launching rockets and missiles, and importantly, flying just above the forward battle area, waiting for observers on the ground to identify targets.

A-10 firing its 7-barrel gun with a firing rate of 70 rounds per second.

High-performance jets from the Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom to the current F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon are supersonic aircraft that drop bombs and fire missiles on a target, but they can't hang around. The Phantom flew so fast that some pilots lowered their landing gear and extended flaps just to slow down over the target.  The Hog can put fire on a target then circle back to the target area waiting for the next opportunity to attack, or to see who survived the first strike.

During the Vietnam War, frustration with Phantoms flying in, attacking and blazing away led to deploying the A-1 Skyraider, taking this big, propellor-driven aircraft out of semi-retirement from Korean War service.  The A-1 and variants carried four 20mm cannons or eight .50 caliber machine guns and could be armed with up to four tons of rockets, bombs and missiles.  Like the Hog, it could loiter. Unlike to the Hog it was not very maneuverable and vulnerable to ground fire.

A-1 Skyraider 

Hog pilots are wrapped in a titanium pod, shielded from small arms and some larger arms.  The twin-engined, twin-tailed Hog can fly with an engine failure and big chunks of the wing and tail shot off.

The Hog was slated to be replaced by the F-35 Lightning II. This Swiss Army Knife aircraft is supposed to do everything. But the F-35 costs more than $200 million each, an A-10 costs a tenth of that.  The A-10 is now scheduled to begin phased retirement in 2022 and remain in service until 2040.

Field Guide to Flying Death: Rockets and Missiles on the Apache Helicopter

Apache Longbow Helicopter 38 rockets and eight Hellfire Missiles under its stub wings.

Death flies in many forms. Two weapons very often confused are rockets and missiles. In the broadest terms, missiles follow a guidance system to their target. Rockets are pointed at the target, fired and follow a ballistic path, gravity and wind resistance, to the target.

A missile is a guided rocket: a rocket is an unguided missile. 

The difference is similar to the difference between smart bombs and dumb bombs.  When released from an aircraft, smart bombs fall to their target but correct their course. Dumb bombs fall and hit wherever their ballistic path takes them. 

A good example o the difference between rockets and missiles is the basic load of the Apache attack helicopter. In all of its various models, the Apache carries both rockets and missiles.  The standard load is 38 rockets, 19 per pod on each side of the aircraft, and eight Hellfire missiles. 

Four Hellfire Missiles and a fully-loaded rocket pod. 

I watched Apaches fire salvos of Hydra 70mm rockets. The pilots point the aircraft at the target and release pairs of rockets, one from each pod, at the target.  The rockets blast from their tube to a speed nearly a half-mile a second, then fly unpowered up to five miles to their target. 

Hellfire missiles were originally designed as tank-buster missiles. They have a dual warhead in the nose with an armor-piercing shaped charge. When fired, it blazes to about 1,000 mph then flies up to five miles locked on the target. If the target moves, the guidance system steers the missile to the target. 

So why would fire rockets when missiles will track a moving target? Cost.  An Apache helicopter with a full load of 38 rockets and eight missiles has a million dollars in munitions hanging on its pylons: $900,000 worth of Hellire missiles at $115,000 each and $100,000 in rockets costing $2,800 each.  A full load of 38 rockets costs less than just one Hellfire missile. 

Rockets are dumb, missiles are smart, but if either one hits, the target is destroyed. 

Everything That Flies is Ballistic

Every flying object from a football to a Saturn V rocket follows a ballistic path through the air as soon as the ball leaves the quarterback’s hand or the rocket burns all of its fuel.  Rockets, missiles, bombs, bullets, and every sort of ball follows a ballistic path once it is thrown, fired, kicked, hit or launched. 

For Americans, the path followed by a long pass in a football game is a beautiful example of a ballistic path.  The thrown ball leaves the quarterback’s hands at about thirty degrees and climbs rapidly in a nearly straight path to its maximum height. After it reaches maximum height, the spinning football drops rapidly into the arms of the running receiver.

Rockets, missiles bullets and bombs follow the same path with a higher starting speed.  Until the advent of cruise missiles, the term ballistic missile was redundant.  The fuel burned in seconds and from then on, the missile was on a ballistic path all the way to its target. 

Cruise missiles are jet planes with one high-explosive passenger in Seat 1A.

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Field Guide to Flying Death: Artillery

Royal Thai Army firing an M198 Howitzer, 155mm. 

The 90-pound projectile jumps from the gun at nearly a half-mile per second. 

It can hit a target 18 miles away in less than a minute.

With so many wars either ramping up or about to begin, I decided to write about all the many, many projectiles that I have fired, I have seen fired, or have been fired at me.  My first post will be about artillery, then I will talk about bombs, bullets, ballistic missiles and guided missiles. I will also talk about how the various forms of flying death start their flights, whether from a gun, an airplane, a submarine or a ship.

Artillery comes in many shapes and sizes, but the M198 is typical. It fires a 90-pound shell anywhere from direct-fire right in front of the gun to nearly 20 miles away. A good crew can fire two rounds per minute for hours or up to four rounds in a minute for a short period. The most common round is HE, High Explosive: 90 pounds of detonator, explosive and a case designed to break into sharp fragments.  The round leaves the gun at more than 2,200-feet-per-second or almost a half-mile per second. The shell can fly to a target 18 miles away in less than 45 seconds.  The kill radius of the blast is 50 meters, the casualty radius is 100 meters.

Drop a 155mm shell from an M198 on a football field in the middle of the fifty-yard line and both teams including the coaches and players on the bench, the camera crews, the refs and everyone with midfield seats near the field will die. Injuries from shrapnel and blast will maim hundreds more in the stands and blow all the windows out of the fancy skyboxes.

But the most important specification is the price.  A brand new howitzer costs just over a half-million dollars.  High explosive rounds cost about $500 each.  So a million bucks buys a brand-new howitzer and a thousand rounds of ammo.

Relative to guided missiles, artillery is cheap and deadly. Dictators on a budget who cannot afford aircraft and high-tech missiles can buy lots of artillery.

And they do.

This cheap, traditional weapon is the key to why the malignant lunatic leader of North Korea holds the civilized world right by the short hairs. Kim Jong Un has thousands of artillery pieces and rocket launchers pointed at Seoul, the capital of South Korea.  If we attack North Korea, his guns start firing at Seoul.  More than 20 million people live in the Seoul metropolitan area and tens of thousands of Americans are also in range of those guns.

Unlike long range missiles and aircraft, there is nothing that can stop an artillery shell in flight. And there is no effect early warning system.  If North Korea starts firing artillery at Seoul the first salvo of shells and missiles will hit in one minute after the command to fire.  Crowded streets, markets, tall glass buildings, apartment complexes, and stadiums are perfect artillery targets.

When armies want to stop artillery, they have to find a way to blow up the enemy guns. Guns can be attacked by aircraft and by artillery, called counter battery fire. But there are too many North Korean guns.  Even if we win a war against North Korea, Seoul would be rubble.

Although accuracy hardly matters when firing artillery against civilians on streets and in glass buildings, modern guns are very accurate.  A well-trained crew will put their first round they fire within the 50-meters of the target at a distance of 20 miles. With a good observer guiding the crew, the next round could hit a golf cart.

Artillery is cheap, effective, mobile and terrible.

Field Guide to Flying Death: Going Fu#king Ballistic

Today on the bicycle ride, one of the faster riders I know was describing an even faster rider and how he won a race.  "He was f#cking ballistic," my friend said.

Actually he was not ballistic.  He was the opposite.  The picture below is a two Hellfire missiles under power launched by a Predator drone.  The rocket fuel is burning.

The next picture (below) is of a missile in its ballistic trajectory:  after the main rocket motor has fully burned.  Guidance motors still operate, but the missile is not under power, it is slowing down although it is traveling very fast.  From the time the main motor fully burns, the speed of the rocket is slowing and is determined by momentum, gravity, and wind resistance--by the laws of physics. It is flying in a "ballistic" path.

Ballistic means unpowered.  A bullet is ballistic AFTER it leaves the gun.

A missile is ballistic when it's flying toward its target after all the propellant has burned.  It is coasting.

My friend was describing quite the opposite.  The fast rider was under power and had more power than any other rider in the race.  If he were actually "ballistic" he would be coasting.

In terms of missiles, a ballistic missile is one that is launched then travels to by coasting at speed over 4,000 mph. It is no longer under power. It's course is corrected by guidance systems.

A car can't be described as ballistic since it is in contact with the ground. It's path is determined by that contact.  But if someone took a car trip that was like a missile flight, the car would accelerate to say 500 mph and then coast trip it arrived.  That trip would require very level, very straight roads. Both wind resistance and rolling resistance would limit the distance, but it would be possible. The steering wheel would be the guidance system.

Science words, for reasons I don't understand, can enter Pop culture with meanings opposite their scientific meaning.

The most well-known opposite word is Theory.  In science, a theory is the BEST possible summary description of a body of research.  So the Theory of Universal Gravitation describes the motion of all objects including missiles, both under power and in ballistic flight.  

But in Pop Culture, "My Theory" describes nothing more than an opinion with no necessary connection to fact or reality.  My Theory could cover things like believing fluoride is a communist plot or that Stanley Kubrik faked the moon landing.