CAS's speech
here.
Only a para on Reaction Engines.
But seems there's substance to the pre-cooler tech, despite the nay-sayers (I'm assuming it's the SABRE concept he's talking about).
Avoiding weapons - at those speeds (hypersonic regime generally being accepted as starting at Mach 5 - or a mile a second - the same speed as the X-15) it'd simply be a case of a vehicle making a slight course adjustment to put you miles away in a comparatively short space of time.
Remember - this has all been done over 50 years ago - admittedly with a different type of power source- and one of those who did it has another historic achievement to his name that we are all celebrating at the moment... Neil Alden Armstrong.
Check out below from around 2.51 - max Q of 1500lbs psi at FL50 before pullup at Mach 6 to 317,000 feet. And all this when cars still had fins...
Yes, the turning radius would be massive, but so was the SR-71's at a tortoise-like Mach 3.
As to releasing weapons - surely the kinetic energy alone of anything of significant weight would be enough to cause mucho damage if released from a vehicle travelling at Mach 5+
The D-21 separated from mother successfully on several occasions - straight up -
- wake vortices are still incredible to watch all these years later.
There was only one nasty collision as far as I am aware.
Again - there's an order of magnitude of difference between M3 and M5 - but wouldn't imagine it's an unsolvable problem.
Many other engineering challenges with travelling so fast - even at great height.
Iconel and other super-alloys might not stand the heat.... ceramics?
Then there's the plasma - say goodbye to high data-rate uplinks and downlinks no doubt.
Much more likely to power a hypersonic missile - than something with a pilot in it.
But we can only hope...