US Hypersonics - Prompt Global Strike Capability
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Who’s Ahead in Hypersonics?
—John A. Tirpak
3/11/2016
China is “way ahead” in hypersonics, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Wednesday night. Speaking at an AFA Mitchell Institute event in Washington, D.C., Work said hypersonics technology is “part and parcel” of his “third offset” strategy to recapture a wide lead over adversaries, but competitors are pouring resources into the field as well. “The Chinese are way ahead in terms of hypersonics. The Russians are behind them, and I would say, we’re somewhere in between,” Work assessed. China’s “got hundreds of hypersonic wind tunnels,” he said, wondering “how do they pay for the overhead? But they are pursuing it in a big, big way.” The US wants hypersonic weapons because their speed offers value in penetration of anti-access, air defense networks, and such weapons will have to have a degree of autonomy to react to that environment. Hypersonics expert Mark Lewis, head of IDA’s Science and Technology Institute and former USAF chief scientist, said Work’s observation about China’s wind tunnels is correct. “You use small wind tunnels for research, and big ones for development of vehicles,” Lewis explained. “China’s biggest hypersonic tunnel is about twice the size” of the biggest one in the US. He was slightly less pessimistic than Work, however, saying the US probably has a narrow lead in hypersonics for another two years or so, and could preserve it with proper investment in programs and facilities. (See also That Breath on Your Neck, Stick with the Waverider, and Getting Serious about Hypersonic Weapons.)
—John A. Tirpak
3/11/2016
China is “way ahead” in hypersonics, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Wednesday night. Speaking at an AFA Mitchell Institute event in Washington, D.C., Work said hypersonics technology is “part and parcel” of his “third offset” strategy to recapture a wide lead over adversaries, but competitors are pouring resources into the field as well. “The Chinese are way ahead in terms of hypersonics. The Russians are behind them, and I would say, we’re somewhere in between,” Work assessed. China’s “got hundreds of hypersonic wind tunnels,” he said, wondering “how do they pay for the overhead? But they are pursuing it in a big, big way.” The US wants hypersonic weapons because their speed offers value in penetration of anti-access, air defense networks, and such weapons will have to have a degree of autonomy to react to that environment. Hypersonics expert Mark Lewis, head of IDA’s Science and Technology Institute and former USAF chief scientist, said Work’s observation about China’s wind tunnels is correct. “You use small wind tunnels for research, and big ones for development of vehicles,” Lewis explained. “China’s biggest hypersonic tunnel is about twice the size” of the biggest one in the US. He was slightly less pessimistic than Work, however, saying the US probably has a narrow lead in hypersonics for another two years or so, and could preserve it with proper investment in programs and facilities. (See also That Breath on Your Neck, Stick with the Waverider, and Getting Serious about Hypersonic Weapons.)
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Kind of goes well with the prior post :'( 2018 for demos?? The Army, Navy and USAF should be EACH flying multiple test platforms with DEPLOYMENT by 2018.
Beyond the Hypersonic
—John A. Tirpak
3/16/2016
Lockheed Martin is working on two approaches to hypersonic flight, company “Skunk Works” chief Rob Weiss told reporters Tuesday. One is the HAWC, for Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, which the Air Force is working on with DARPA. The other is a Tactical Boost-Glide vehicle similar to the old “Common Aerospace Vehicle” concept. Both will be ready for flight demonstrations in 2018, Weiss said at a company media event. Both vehicles would be accelerated to hypersonic speeds by separate boosters, but at that point the HAWC would engage a scramjet engine. The HAWC will explore both the engine and materials that would make it unnecessary to liquid-cool the vehicle, as well as efficient air vehicle configurations and manufacturing techniques, Weiss reported. A future Skunk Works concept, soon to be pitched to DARPA, would be air-breathing from takeoff, he also reported. Lockheed is partnered with Aerojet Rocketdyne on the engine, Weiss noted. He also noted that the DARPA hypersonic work is unrelated to the Air Force’s Long-Range Standoff Missile project.
Beyond the Hypersonic
—John A. Tirpak
3/16/2016
Lockheed Martin is working on two approaches to hypersonic flight, company “Skunk Works” chief Rob Weiss told reporters Tuesday. One is the HAWC, for Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, which the Air Force is working on with DARPA. The other is a Tactical Boost-Glide vehicle similar to the old “Common Aerospace Vehicle” concept. Both will be ready for flight demonstrations in 2018, Weiss said at a company media event. Both vehicles would be accelerated to hypersonic speeds by separate boosters, but at that point the HAWC would engage a scramjet engine. The HAWC will explore both the engine and materials that would make it unnecessary to liquid-cool the vehicle, as well as efficient air vehicle configurations and manufacturing techniques, Weiss reported. A future Skunk Works concept, soon to be pitched to DARPA, would be air-breathing from takeoff, he also reported. Lockheed is partnered with Aerojet Rocketdyne on the engine, Weiss noted. He also noted that the DARPA hypersonic work is unrelated to the Air Force’s Long-Range Standoff Missile project.
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Lockheed hails progress on hypersonic military aircraft (ft.com, registration may be required)
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Flyaway said:
"the company is building on “several breakthroughs” made during the short-lived HTV-3X Blackswift hypersonic testbed, which was de-funded by Congress in fiscal year 2009, to develop “a controllable, low-drag aerodynamic configuration capable of stable operation from takeoff to subsonic, transonic, supersonic and hypersonic to Mach 6”.
Imagine if they'd continued the program. Not shovel-ready enough I guess.
sferrin said:
You mean a project which never had any hope in hell of going anywhere besides a drawing, was likely never intended to be anything more than that, and for which none of the technologies existed, or succeeded, at the time?
PS: Our of curiosity sferrin, is there any military project today, or in the past, which you think progressed or produced a product in accordance with your taste? Seems to me you think every project is always a series of cluster-fs and messes, which apparently were always foreseeable and avoidable; or always seem to produce something subpar. So I'm curious if there's anything you haven't deemed a failure.
DrRansom
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sferrin said:
There is a basic problem with the Lockheed plan, too much of the reusable hypersonic aircraft design space remains completely untested:
- No flight test of sustained hypersonic engine, 5 minutes apparently achieved thermal equilibrium. Is that the case for a larger engine?
- No flight test of large scale hypersonic engine, no tests anywhere of large scale hypersonic engine. And don't say CFD is enough, because in this case it isn't.
- No integrated tests of combined cycle hypersonic engine + jet engine, at small or large scales
- No flight tests of combined cycle engines
- Other serious issues, which I won't go into here.
The propulsion plan for a large scale hypersonic vehicle is all basic research at this point. There is barely enough understanding of the X-51 engine, making something larger is completely novel work.
What appears in that statement is the aerodynamic solution, Lockheed managed to find an efficient aerodynamic shape for a hypersonic vehicle. Congratulations, the large scale aerodynamics are well understood, if imperfectly modeled. Too bad virtually everything else is barely out of basic research
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DrRansom said:
Even LM wouldn't have said what they did unless more of this has been tested than seen in public. I imagine various bits & pieces have been tested in the classfied realm, after all that timescale for flying a technological demonstrator looks mighty ambitious.
DrRansom
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sferrin said:
At least two of my points are flight test arguments, not flight tests of large scale scramjets nor of combined cycle scramjets. As for the rest, I know of an AEDC program to test a large-scale scramjet, which has been referenced already in this forum, but I doubt they have reached flight-test ready designs in the timeframe since tests started.
It isn't the case that the USAF can hide hypersonic flight tests, they require too much range-safety measures.
seruriermarshal
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DrRansom said:
Or they test hypersonic flight outside US (Kauai ?) .
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Indian sea-launched conventional ballistic missile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygcyV-EC6dc
{Sea-launched Shaurya)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaurya_%28missile%29
We should just outright buy some of these things from India (since we're apparently incapable or unwilling to develop something like this despite all the talk of wanting the capability). You could fit 4 of them in each silo in an Ohio SSGN or four of them in each Virginia VPT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygcyV-EC6dc
{Sea-launched Shaurya)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaurya_%28missile%29
We should just outright buy some of these things from India (since we're apparently incapable or unwilling to develop something like this despite all the talk of wanting the capability). You could fit 4 of them in each silo in an Ohio SSGN or four of them in each Virginia VPT.
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http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-04-26/russia-and-china-are-starting-a-new-arms-race-and-the-us-has-to-join
The most dangerous of the three is the hypersonic missile: this hypersonic rocket re-enters the atmosphere, then a glider pulls up to fly horizontally, unpowered, for up to thousands of miles at preliminary speeds in the high hypersonic range of Mach 10 to 20 (about 7,000 to 14,000 miles per hour). There is no defense against this type of missile.
Aside from speed, the missile can travel close to the ground, and evade defenses; the highly vaunted Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system is incapable of hitting it. Russia is exploring missiles like the 3K22 Zircon system, while China is working on the Dongfeng 21D, often referred to as the aircraft "carrier killer," or the Dongfeng 41, which is potentially the longest range ICBM in the world. (The dragon is leading the bear quite significantly in this area.) China may be able to have its missiles operational by 2020, and hope to have conventional versions that can target American naval assets in the Pacific.
The most dangerous of the three is the hypersonic missile: this hypersonic rocket re-enters the atmosphere, then a glider pulls up to fly horizontally, unpowered, for up to thousands of miles at preliminary speeds in the high hypersonic range of Mach 10 to 20 (about 7,000 to 14,000 miles per hour). There is no defense against this type of missile.
Aside from speed, the missile can travel close to the ground, and evade defenses; the highly vaunted Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system is incapable of hitting it. Russia is exploring missiles like the 3K22 Zircon system, while China is working on the Dongfeng 21D, often referred to as the aircraft "carrier killer," or the Dongfeng 41, which is potentially the longest range ICBM in the world. (The dragon is leading the bear quite significantly in this area.) China may be able to have its missiles operational by 2020, and hope to have conventional versions that can target American naval assets in the Pacific.
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Articles from the commentariat coming fast and furious now.
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/china-and-russias-hypersonic-rise-to-nuclear-superiority/
A little while ago both the LA Times and New York Times had articles about the decaying Triad and nuclear enterprise to which I commented, "When they start to notice things may be worse than I imagine."
This thought holds true for hypersonics as well.
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/china-and-russias-hypersonic-rise-to-nuclear-superiority/
A little while ago both the LA Times and New York Times had articles about the decaying Triad and nuclear enterprise to which I commented, "When they start to notice things may be worse than I imagine."
This thought holds true for hypersonics as well.
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bobbymike said:
Wait 'til they discover you can't just turn the machine on again because the machine is gone and there's nobody left who knows how to make a new one - in the US anyway. China and Russia are doing just fine.
DrRansom
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Along these lines, US military observers cling to the delusion that countries are still 5 - 10 years away from deploying a glider MARV. If China has 7 flight tests, that has to put China very close to something which is deployable in IOC capability. US has, IIRC, 2 - 3 flight tests with the Army weapon?
I would not be surprised if China / Russia have gliders by 2018. A small force, 5 - 20 weapons, would be enough to target missile defense batteries / radars. Then the regular ICBM force could conduct primary nuclear strikes.
I would not be surprised if China / Russia have gliders by 2018. A small force, 5 - 20 weapons, would be enough to target missile defense batteries / radars. Then the regular ICBM force could conduct primary nuclear strikes.
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Call me paranoid or someone who can't get past "Cold War" thinking but the current state of affairs is very worrisome to me. I see complete Russian nuclear modernization (every system MIRV capable well beyond anything needed for New START) along with China's almost completely opaque nuclear enterprise and their testing of very large 10+ MIRV capable systems (I really doubt the 250-400 warheads estimate) and I think the US might find itself in a large strategic position of weakness in the 2020-2025 timeframe.sferrin said:
When you combine Crimea (and other Russian areas of aggression) and the SCS activities of China...........
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bobbymike said:
I think that you are actually being optimistic, and that the United States is already in said strategic position, also known as thoroughly f**ked, pardon my French.
marauder2048
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marauder2048 said:
Where it gets really scary is how about this? China hits US silos with conventional weapons and then tells the US they'll follow up with nukes if we do anything. What do we do? What would Russia or China do if we did that to them? They have credibility, we don't. On the other hand they won't pose a threat until they have them. They don't -yet- but it's just a matter of time. I do not have any confidence whatsoever that our leaders will figure it out.
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marauder2048 said:
This graph indicates it is pk vs cep for a boost glide penetrator or MOP against an *SS-18* silo. I don't see the relevance to MM III unless I am missing something?
marauder2048
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quellish said:
If you're suggesting that MM III silos are hardened against kinetic energy penetrators we'd all like to hear about it; it was a growing concern in the 80's so something may have been done there.
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marauder2048 said:
You don't even need to hit the lid. Hit close enough to hit the rails and it can't open. Hit the ground near it and heave it up and you can't launch. If we actually were credible this wouldn't even be an issue. If China and Russia actually BELIEVED we would nuke them if they attacked our ICBMs, conventionally or no, they wouldn't even consider it. Such are the fruits of weakness.
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