If you know the reason why they tend to go HTK and the reason they've developed PAC-3, you wouldn't use the word "reliably shoot down TBM" that easily. If anything they'll need a warhead that works like lethality enhancer on PAC-3 instead of general HEBF or continuous rod found on most SAM warheads. Apart from that it would also need endgame maneuverability enhancement and incorporating such would make it quite a different missile already. So in short, no.
Agreed with the point that I'd rather believe what US DoD says, but in general putting faith in randome Quora post by some random dude doesn't spark much confidence.
1) By reliably I mean with a kill probability over 50%.
Previously I thought without kill vehicle the chance against this kind of hypersonic balistic targets was much lower 20%/25%.
(Also, as USN planning to shoot down hypersonic targets with SM-6 which doesn't even have kill vehicle or end game maneuverability enhancement, it inspire confidence in my hypothesis)
2) And the reason they developed PAC-3 is to garunteee a hit with a kill probability of 95% with two interceptor assigned against each target.
3) Agreed, I don't put too much faith into random qouran either. But here I am talking about the argument (not the man) which seems convincing to me.
Also he doesn't know the existence of lethality enhancer warhead on PAC-3 and cites wrong reasons.
Reading from his other posts he is not the guy to miss such basic info.
I think his point stands. And afaik, small enhance lethality warhead is complementary and meant for airfracfts and cruise missiles. It is unlikely to have same effect on hypersonic targets, unless interceptor kineticcally slams into it. That's the whole point of PAC-3. Which would have totally obliterated the missile in the first place. Thus, it is very likely that it was a PAC-2 GEM.