> ships move means nothing at all, the missiles are tracking the ships with radar. missile defence shoots down some missiles yes, but usually the idea with these types of attacks is overwhealimg air defence systems with volume of fire, so you fire on the order of 30 missiles at once, and use a probabalistic attack to ensure one or two make it through

I think you're misunderstanding how these missile systems work and overestimating their ability to "lock on" - it's not a video game where they have near-perfect accuracy.

> Hypersonic boost glide missiles can manouver sharply, travel at speeds of up to mach 5, have next to no radar signature, and can time their attacks and manouver such that they come at a carrier group from all angles at once.

Launch of these missiles can be detected by U.S. space-based assets via their thermal signatures, so the CSG would probably know they are coming (obviously anything can happen in war and maybe this doesn't happen, but it's likely to be detected).

Once detected the CSG can begin evasive maneuvers - spreading out for example. These ships are pretty quick and even small course adjustments may render the missiles ineffective. While the hypersonic missiles can adjust in-flight somewhat, it's much more difficult to be accurate with them. Think about it - they're launching missiles from hundreds of miles away to hit tiny ships in a gigantic ocean at a high rate of speed and those ships can shoot some of the missiles down (or at least the research is being done) and move around. It's difficult for the missile to adjust.

Think about it like this: China launches these missiles, and they're very fast but they're detected. USN ships start immediate evasive maneuvers. They don't have much time, but the missile is so fast it also doesn't have much time to adjust. It's never "locked on" in any sense you may be thinking. So can the ships get out of the way? A near miss might as well be a miss by a million miles. It remains to be seen.

There's also something to consider that they aren't cheap, and there aren't very many of them. These aren't simple cruise missiles, and a Chinese launch of such hypersonic missiles is likely to not be a repeatable attack - even so you open the launch sites up to response from the CSG or air assets from other locations. In many war game scenarios I've read, China essentially launches all of the missiles and damages USN assets in the region, but the U.S. just brings more while also retaliating and destroying Chinese assets. A quick and violent war is the best hope that China has (maybe the U.S. will back down) - but long term it loses a war of attrition based on the chess pieces and what's on the board.

So even if China launched missiles and they were wildly successful, it's not going to end the war but at best buy China some time and a moral victory.

Overall, I highly question the ability of Chinese capabilities to effectively track and put missiles on targets. These capabilities will probably improve over time (unless the Chinese nation collapses due to economic factors) which will basically mean that the U.S. will think twice before attacking China due to a serious concern about damage to naval assets.

> The department of defence has said several times that hypersonics are their "top priority". Just because you don't hear them besides themselves in the media doesn't mean they aren't seriously concerned, but this kind of thing naturally tends to be kept muted in order to not make it obvious if they are defenceless

When you read articles about the U.S. military "sounding the alarm" I would not take that at face value.

As an aside - if you're interested in further reading the Rand Corporation and others put out some pretty fascinating in-depth discussions about topics like these.