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Overigen => Nieuwe ontwikkelingen op Defensiegebied => Topic gestart door: VandeWiel op 18/11/2011 | 10:08 uur

Titel: US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: VandeWiel op 18/11/2011 | 10:08 uur
HONOLULU: The Army on Thursday conducted its first flight test of a new weapon capable of traveling five times the speed of sound.

The Army launched the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon from the military's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai at about 1:30 a.m.      The weapon's "glide vehicle" reached Kwajalein Atoll – some 2,300 miles away – in less than half an hour, said Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Earlier this year, the Congressional Research Service said in a report the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon is part of the military's program to develop "prompt global strike" weapons that would allow the U.S. to strike targets anywhere in the world with conventional weapons in as little as an hour. The Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, are developing a similar vehicle.

The Pentagon said the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, or AHW, vehicle is designed to fly long ranges within the earth's atmosphere at speeds that are at least five times the speed of sound.

The objective of Thursday's test was to collect data on technologies that boost the hypersonic vehicle and allow it to glide. The Army was also testing how the vehicle performed in long-range flight.

The Congressional Research Service report said the AHW would be able to maneuver to avoid flying over third party nations as it approached its target. The weapon would use a precision guidance system to home in on the target, it said.


http://www.dawn.com/2011/11/18/army-tests-hypersonic-weapon-over-the-pacific.html
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: VandeWiel op 18/11/2011 | 10:15 uur
6000kmu? Dan heb je niet veel meer aan je Stinger als beveiliging... Ik ben benieuwd of er op dit moment uberhaupt iets is wat dit kan stoppen. :sick:


En 4000km bereik? Dat betekent perfect voor een scenario tegen China waarbij je niets/zeer weinig hebt aan carriers en bases in de directe regio omdat die per direct uitgeschakeld zouden worden.


Van de andere kant heb je ook geen F35's meer nodig voor de eerste golf aangezien je toch heeeel ver weg blijft ;)


Met al die nieuwe wapens, heel cynisch, wordt het niet eens tijd dat de VS weer een high intensity oorlog krijgen om ze uit te proberen en te verkopen?
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: VandeWiel op 18/11/2011 | 10:23 uur
Nog wat info:

On 17 November 2011, the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command conducted the first test flight of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) concept. At 6:30 a.m. EST (1:30 a.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Time) the test vehicle was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii to the Reagan Test Site, US Army Kwajalein Atoll. The objective of the test was to collect data on hypersonic boost-glide technologies and test range performance for long-range atmospheric flight. Mission emphasis was on aerodynamics; navigation, guidance, and control; and thermal protection technologies.

During the 17 November 2011 test, a 3-stage booster system launched the AHW glide vehicle and successfully deployed it on the desired flight trajectory. The vehicle flew a non-ballistic glide trajectory at hypersonic speed to the planned impact location at the Reagan Test Site. Space, air, sea, and ground platforms collected vehicle performance data during all phases of flight. The data collected was to be used by the Department of Defense to model and develop future hypersonic boost-glide capabilities.


http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/ahw.htm


Wederom een niet-nucleair-niet-ballistisch wapen dat andere landen niet doet denken dat er een ICBM aanval komt.

Misschien dat dit tzt ook wel de VS variant van een carier killer wordt? Ik weet niet of het geschikt is of gemaakt kan worden tegen bewegende doelen?
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 18/11/2011 | 10:32 uur
Citaat van: VandeWiel op 18/11/2011 | 10:15 uur
6000kmu? Dan heb je niet veel meer aan je Stinger als beveiliging... Ik ben benieuwd of er op dit moment uberhaupt iets is wat dit kan stoppen. :sick:


En 4000km bereik? Dat betekent perfect voor een scenario tegen China waarbij je niets/zeer weinig hebt aan carriers en bases in de directe regio omdat die per direct uitgeschakeld zouden worden.


Van de andere kant heb je ook geen F35's meer nodig voor de eerste golf aangezien je toch heeeel ver weg blijft ;)


Met al die nieuwe wapens, heel cynisch, wordt het niet eens tijd dat de VS weer een high intensity oorlog krijgen om ze uit te proberen en te verkopen?

Aktie en reactie...

Als dit soort systemen over een aantal jaar operationeel worden dan kan je er natuurlijk op rekenen dat men anti systemen gaat ontwikkelen,

Op dit moment (2011) denk ik dat geen enkel systeem in staat is een hypersoon wapen tegen te houden, hooguit de meest geavanceerde CIWS systemen voor de marines die nu in ontwikkeling zijn.

Systemen als F35 worden in de hypersone wereld overbodig, je kan op grote afstand in een zeer beperkte tijd vrijwel alle viltale doellen uitschakelen waarna drones het werk afmaken.

Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: Harald op 18/11/2011 | 10:55 uur
De test is uitgevoerd met een HTV-2 ??

Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) is to provide a transformational capability on the order of 6,000 KM [3200 NM] range with 35 minute time-of-flight and < 10 meter accuracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project


X51 is ook interessant, maar heeft een bereik van 400+ miles (640+ km)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-51

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/waverider/docs/X-51A_overview.pdf

Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 19/11/2011 | 08:59 uur
Overal ter wereld toeslaan, binnen een uur

Door Bas Benneker

18 november 2011 17:40 | bnr.nl

De VS hebben donderdag met succes een hypersonische superraket getest die binnen een uur overal ter wereld een vernietigende lading kan afleveren.

Osama
Op 20 augustus 1998 vuurde een Amerikaans fregat in de Arabische Zee een Tomahawk-raket af op een trainingskamp in Afghanistan. Doelwit: Osama bin Laden. De raket deed twee uur over de 2000 kilometer, genoeg om de terroristenleider ruimschoots de tijd te geven het hazenpad te kiezen.

Hadden de Amerikanen toen kunnen beschikken over het "Advanced Hypersonic Weapon" (AHW) dat ze donderdag met succes hebben getest, dan hadden de torens van het World Trade Center vandaag nog fier overeind gestaan.

Mach 5+
Geen wonder dus, dat het Pentagon de afgelopen jaren miljarden dollars heeft besteed aan het zogeheten Prompt Global Strike programma. Missie: binnen een uur overal ter wereld kunnen toeslaan. Dat programma leverde donderdag dus een eerste succes op.

De raket werd gelanceerd vanaf Hawaiï en reisde met hypersonische snelheden - alles boven Mach 5, of vijf keer de snelheid van het geluid (1200 km/u) - om 4000 kilometer verderop in te slaan op het koraaleiland Kwajalein, bij de Marshalleilanden.

27000 km/u
Het Pentagon heeft niet onthuld welke snelheden het AHW haalde, maar bij een eerdere, mislukte test met een soortgelijk projectiel werd 27000 km/u bereikt. Anders dan een ballistische raket kan het AHW tijdens de vlucht bestuurd worden, en dus ook bewegende doelen treffen.

Het project is onderdeel van het Prompt Global Strike programma, waar alleen dit jaar al 240 miljoen dollar (175 miljoen euro) in is gestoken. De donderdag geteste raket kostte bijna 70 miljoen dollar (51,1 miljoen euro).

Revolutionair
Het Amerikaanse leger beschrijft het project als "transformatief". En terecht, want als de hypersonische rakettechnologie gebruiksklaar is, betekent dat niet minder dan een strategische revolutie.

Voordeel van de supersnelle raketten is niet alleen dat ze inslaan voordat de vijand kan reageren, maar ook dat ze het mogelijk maken landen als Iran en Noord-Korea aan te vallen met conventionele wapens zonder kernmachten als China en Rusland te alarmeren - en een nucleair Armageddon te ontketenen.

Noordpool
Nu moeten Amerikaanse langeafstandsraketten richting zulke landen over de Noordpool vliegen. Tijdens hun vlucht zijn ze niet te onderscheiden van kernraketten voor de Chinezen en Russen beneden, die dan in paniek op hun rode knoppen zouden kunnen drukken.

Maar met hypersonische snelheid slaat een raket zo snel in dat andere kernmachten kunnen zien dat de lading conventioneel is voordat ze "nucleaire vergelding" hebben kunnen zeggen. 

http://www.bnr.nl/programma/denktank/253602-1111/overal-ter-wereld-toeslaan-binnen-een-uur
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: VandeWiel op 19/11/2011 | 11:40 uur
Citaat van: jurrien visser op 19/11/2011 | 08:59 uur
Maar met hypersonische snelheid slaat een raket zo snel in dat andere kernmachten kunnen zien dat de lading conventioneel is voordat ze "nucleaire vergelding" hebben kunnen zeggen. 

http://www.bnr.nl/programma/denktank/253602-1111/overal-ter-wereld-toeslaan-binnen-een-uur

Dat is natuurlijk onzin. Binnen een uur hebben ze al lang een paar keer op de rode knop gedrukt.

Zodra de hypersonische raketten worden uitgerust met atoom koppen loop je hetzelfde risico. Dus even afspreken dat allemaal braaf niet te doen ;)

Enige echte voordeel is dat het vluchtpad niet over en richting landen met klamme handjes hoeft te gaan.
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 20/04/2012 | 14:11 uur
Air Force Hypersonic Weapons Face Critical Tests

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The Air Force expects to see significant progress in its pursuit of hypersonic weapons.

In May, a U.S.-Australia scramjet will perform a flight test from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai. The HiFiRE (Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation) program has seen two previous successful tests, reaching speeds five times the speed of sound.

In June, the Air force will hold an "industry day" for companies to learn how they can help the service achieve its goal of a performing a high-speed strike weapon demonstration by fiscal year 2017.

And in August, the X-51 test vehicle will make its third flight test. The first took place in May 2010, when the demonstrator reached Mach 5 speed but fell short of its goal of a 300-second flight. The second test occurred in June 2011 and had to be cut short when the scramjet engine failed to transition to full power.

All of these efforts go a long way toward gathering the information needed to design a successful long-range strike capability, said John Leugers, principal aerospace engineer in the munitions directorate at the Air Force Research Laboratory.

The Air Force is seeking to develop missiles that can reach targets anywhere in the world within minutes. Several more test flights are planned over the next several years. Each experiment gives researchers more data about issues such as aerodynamics, engine performance and heating.

Meanwhile, studies such as Technology for Responsive Precision Air Land Sea Strike, or TRESPALS2, are looking at "how fast is fast enough for high-speed weapons," according to a briefing Leugers gave April 18 at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual science and engineering technology conference.

The need for hypersonic cruise missiles is based on an assessment of threats on the horizon, he said.

"You're going to need long-range," Leugers said. "Trust me."

A great deal of work still has to be done on advanced guidance systems as well as tailoring warheads to specific targets. The airframes, which would be expected to travel more than 500 miles, also need to be lightweight and able to withstand high temperatures, Leugers said.

Tests with X-51 also are informing research into creating a hypersonic spy aircraft that could cruise at speeds greater than Mach 4 but still take off and land on a runway. Leugers described the investigation of such an aircraft as more in the exploration stage. Challenges remain, including how to make a potential platform affordable.

Surprisingly, studies have shown that a hypersonic missile may not be as expensive as initially thought, Leugers said.

The Defense Department supports these efforts. Initially, the Pentagon wanted the Air Force to be able to perform a weapon demonstration in 2014. The Air Force is hoping to accomplish the feat now by the 2017-2018 timeframe, though Pentagon officials at the conference said they are still holding out hope it could happen in 2016.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=761
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 23/04/2012 | 07:25 uur
Twintig keer sneller dan het geluid

Amerikaanse militaire superstraaljager
zondag 22 april 2012
Door: Hans van den Nieuwendijk
Categorie: Wetenschap

Het Amerikaanse ministerie van defensie heeft een gevechtstoestel ontwikkeld dat binnen één uur overal ter wereld een aanval kan uitvoeren. De resultaten van een testvlucht vorig jaar zijn nu bekend gemaakt.

De experimentele en onbemande superstraaljager steeg in augustus op bovenop een raket van Vandenberg Air Force Base in Californië en klom naar een hoogte die niet wordt vrijgegeven. Daar kwam de zogeheten Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 vrij van de raket en nam het een snoekduik terug naar aarde. Vervolgens kwam het weer horizontaal en behield drie minuten lang een snelheid van 20 keer sneller dan het geluid (Mach 20). Een kleine mislukking omdat het toestel eigenlijk 30 minuten lang over een afstand van bijna 6500 kilometer naar het westen moest vliegen, maar omdat er delen van de buitenkant van het toestel afvielen, moest dat na negen minuten al afgebroken worden.

In april 2010 werd de allereerste vlucht met een soortgelijk toestel uitgevoerd en ook die vlucht werd vroegtijdig afgebroken. Er staan vooralsnog geen nieuwe testvluchten gepland. Het project kost 320 miljoen dollar.

Met Mach 20 duurt een vlucht van New York naar Los Angeles iets minder dan 12 minuten.

Bron: Los Angeles Times


http://www.welingelichtekringen.nl/20489-twintig-keer-sneller-dan-het-geluid.html
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: IPA NG op 23/04/2012 | 13:36 uur
Is dat niet de entry vehicle voor de Prompt Global Strike?
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 24/04/2012 | 14:25 uur
Pentagon explains why hypersonic, Mach 20 drone failed (bekijk de link voor de video)

Published April 23, 2012

WASHINGTON –  The Pentagon has finally released a report about what went wrong when its Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2) failed just minutes into a test flight last year and barreled into the Pacific Ocean.

The unmanned, arrowhead-shaped aircraft, which one day could allow the US to strike anywhere across the globe in less than 60 minutes, was strapped to a rocket and launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base last August.

The drone coasted at speeds of 13,000mph (21,000kmph) -- 20 times the speed of sound -- through the Earth's atmosphere for less than three minutes before ultimately failing and switching into abort-mode just nine minutes into the flight. It splashed down short of its intended target near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said an analysis of the crash showed that high speeds peeled off larger-than-expected portions of the vehicle's skin.

'HTV-2's first flight test corrected our models regarding aerodynamic design.'

- Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz

Officials anticipated some of the outer shell would gradually wear away, but rapidly-forming gaps on the skin created strong shock waves around the HTV-2 and caused it to roll abruptly, the report said.

Military researchers, however, were hopeful that they could learn from the mistakes of the failed flight, especially after the first HTV-2 mission in April 2010 -- which also terminated early -- prompted successful adjustments to the craft's aerodynamic design.

"HTV-2's first flight test corrected our models regarding aerodynamic design within this flight regime," Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, DARPA program manager, said in a statement. "We applied that data in flight test two, which ultimately led to stable aerodynamically controlled flight."

Schulz added that data collected during the second test flight "revealed new knowledge about thermal-protective material properties and uncertainties" for flights at such a high speed in our atmosphere. Going forward, that data will be used to modify how the vehicle's outer shell responds to heat stress, DARPA said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/23/pentagon-explains-why-hypersonic-mach-20-drone-failed/#ixzz1sxZoBLS8
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 26/06/2012 | 13:20 uur
Third X-51 hypersonic test vehicle to fly soon

By:   Dave Majumdar Washington DC

A third Boeing X-51 hypersonic test vehicle will fly shortly, a senior company official says.

"We're planning to fly another vehicle shortly," says Joe Vogel, Boeing's hypersonics director. The test vehicle will fly as soon as the government gives its assent. "It'll be this year."

That would be the missile-like test vehicle's third flight. Two earlier tests successfully demonstrated hypersonic flight, but the air vehicles did not fly for as long a duration as was expected.

"I consider it successful," Vogel says of the truncated previous flights.

Vogel notes that the first flight set a world record for duration at hypersonic speed while the second flight ended with a controlled landing into the ocean.

There is also a fourth test vehicle available to the programme. If the third flight proves to be completely successful, that remaining test article could be used for materials testing or testing different flight profiles, Vogel says.

Boeing is working on the supersonic combustion ram jet, or scramjet, with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), US Air Force Research Laboratory and Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne.

If successful, the endeavor could yield new missiles, aircraft and space-launch vehicles, Vogel says. A flight from New York to Los Angeles could take less 39 minutes at Mach 5, he adds.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/third-x-51-hypersonic-test-vehicle-to-fly-soon-373383/
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 18/07/2012 | 11:01 uur
US Military close to developing Hypersonic bombers

Press Trust of India | Updated: July 17, 2012

Washington: US is close to developing a hypersonic bomber able to reach any target on the globe in under an hour.

The US military hopes to fly such hypersonic planes capable of moving at 20 times the speed of sound by 2016, the NBC News reported quoting American officials working on the project.

The vehicle would be "recoverable", US government officials working on developing the full-scale rocket plane said.
DARPA has conducted two test flights of prototype hypersonic aircraft in the past two years. In August last year, the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) reached Mach 20, but only remained airborne for nine minutes.

The HTV-2 was developed in conjunction with the advanced Conventional Prompt Global Strike weapons programme with the goal of creating a bomber able to reach any target on the globe in under an hour.

The US government has started a new programme called Integrated Hypersonics with an aim to develop ultra-fast fighters and the project is in response to the US military advantage being threatened by other nations' increasing abilities in stealth and counter-stealth warfare.

"We do not yet have a complete hypersonic system solution," said Gregory Hulcher, director of strategic warfare at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said in a statement.

"Programme like Integrated Hypersonics will leverage previous investments in this field and continue to reduce risk, inform development and advance capabilities."

The programme's research will focus on five key areas: thermal protection system and hot structures; aerodynamics; guidance, navigation and control (GNC); range/instrumentation; and propulsion. Thermal protection is a crucial issue for hypersonic flight, which is defined as anything over Mach 5. A vehicle flying inside the atmosphere at Mach 20 would experience temperatures in excess of 1920 degrees Celsius - hot enough to melt steel. The project will also aim to improve design and manufacturing processes, in order to able faster production.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/us-military-close-to-developing-hypersonic-bombers-244256
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 07/08/2012 | 08:00 uur
Third X-51A Hypersonic Test Targeted For Mid-August

By Guy Norris. Source: Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

August 06, 2012

ATLANTA — U.S. Air Force officials say the third, and possibly final, attempt to reach or exceed sustained speeds beyond Mach 5 with the X-51A hypersonic demonstrator is set for Aug. 14.

Describing the X-51A as "the key to the next step in hypersonics," Air Force Research Laboratory Aerospace Systems Director Doug Bowers says that even the mixed success of the initial X-51A flights has proved invaluable to advancing the state-of-the-art. Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Joint Propulsion Conference earlier this week, Bowers said, "The first X-51 was mostly a success, the second flight was a hung store [failed to release from the B-2 mothership] and on the third the inlet started but un-started. Every flight test we've had has been a learning opportunity, and until we took it to flight we really didn't know the unknowns."

The latest X-51A includes a series of hardware and software changes to counter issues that are thought to have brought the last flight to a premature end after only 9.5 sec. of powered flight at around Mach 5. The second flight, on June 13, 2011, ended when the vehicle's Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne SJX61-2 engine failed to transition from ethylene fuel to JP-7. The ethylene is used to start the scramjet, while JP-7 is used for sustained flight.

Designed to demonstrate technologies for sustained, air-breathing hypersonic flight up to Mach 6.5, the first flight of the X-51 on May 25, 2010, reached Mach 4.88. Although the first X-51A did not reach Mach 5, the test was considered a technical success as some 143 sec. of the vehicle's 210 sec. of total powered flight time was under scramjet power, making the flight 11 times longer than any previous air-breathing flight with a scramjet. A fourth X-51A is close to completion at Boeing's Palmdale, Calif., facilities, but is currently not funded for flight testing.

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/asd_08_06_2012_p02-01-483238.xml
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 07/08/2012 | 21:48 uur
Hypersonics - the New Stealth: DARPA Investments In Extreme Hypersonics Continue

Source: Darpa

DARPA's research and development in stealth technology during the 1970s and 1980s led to the world's most advanced radar-evading aircraft, providing strategic national security advantage to the United States. Today, that strategic advantage is threatened as other nations' abilities in stealth and counter-stealth improve. Restoring that battle space advantage requires advanced speed, reach and range. Hypersonic technologies have the potential to provide the dominance once afforded by stealth to support a range of varied future national security missions.

Extreme hypersonic flight at Mach 20 (i.e., 20 times the speed of sound)—which would enable DoD to get anywhere in the world in under an hour—is an area of research where significant scientific advancements have eluded researchers for decades. Thanks to programs by DARPA, the Army, and the Air Force in recent years, however, more information has been obtained about this challenging subject.

"DoD's hypersonic technology efforts have made significant advancements in our technical understanding of several critical areas including aerodynamics; aerothermal effects; and guidance, navigation and control," said Acting DARPA Director, Kaigham J. Gabriel. "but additional unknowns exist."

Tackling remaining unknowns for DoD hypersonics efforts is the focus of the new DARPA Integrated Hypersonics (IH) program. "History is rife with examples of different designs for 'flying vehicles' and approaches to the traditional commercial flight we all take for granted today," explained Gabriel. "For an entirely new type of flight—extreme hypersonic—diverse solutions, approaches and perspectives informed by the knowledge gained from DoD's previous efforts are critical to achieving our goals."

To encourage this diversity, DARPA will host a Proposers' Day on August 14, 2012, to detail the technical areas for which proposals are sought through an upcoming competitive broad agency announcement.

"We do not yet have a complete hypersonic system solution," said Gregory Hulcher, director of Strategic Warfare, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. "Programs like Integrated Hypersonics will leverage previous investments in this field and continue to reduce risk, inform development, and advance capabilities."

The IH program expands hypersonic technology research to include five primary technical areas: thermal protection system and hot structures; aerodynamics; guidance, navigation, and control (GNC); range/instrumentation; and propulsion.

At Mach 20, vehicles flying inside the atmosphere experience intense heat, exceeding 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hotter than a blast furnace capable of melting steel, as well as extreme pressure on the aeroshell. The thermal protection materials and hot structures technology area aims to advance understanding of high-temperature material characteristics to withstand both high thermal and structural loads. Another goal is to optimize structural designs and manufacturing processes to enable faster production of high-mach aeroshells.

The aerodynamics technology area focuses on future vehicle designs for different missions and addresses the effects of adding vertical and horizontal stabilizers or other control surfaces for enhanced aero-control of the vehicle. Aerodynamics seeks technology solutions to ensure the vehicle effectively manages energy to be able to glide to its destination. Desired technical advances in the GNC technology area include advances in software to enable the vehicle to make real-time, in-flight adjustments to changing parameters, such as high-altitude wind gusts, to stay on an optimal flight trajectory.

The range/instrumentation area seeks advanced technologies to embed data measurement sensors into the structure that can withstand the thermal and structural loads to provide real-time thermal and structural parameters, such as temperature, heat transfer, and how the aeroshell skin recedes due to heat. Embedding instrumentation that can provide real-time air data measurements on the vehicle during flight is also desired. Unlike subsonic aircraft that have external probes measuring air density, temperature and pressure of surrounding air, vehicles traveling Mach 20 can't take external probe measurements. Vehicle concepts that make use of new collection and measurement assets are also being sought.

The propulsion technology area is developing a single, integrated launch vehicle designed to precisely insert a hypersonic glide vehicle into its desired trajectory, rather than adapting a booster designed for space missions. The propulsion area also addresses integrated rocket propulsion technology onboard vehicles to enable a vehicle to give itself an in-flight rocket boost to extend its glide range.

"By broadening the scope of research and engaging a larger community in our efforts, we have the opportunity to usher in a new area of flight more rapidly and, in doing so, develop a new national security capability far beyond previous initiatives," explained Air Force Maj. Christopher Schulz, DARPA program manager, who holds a doctorate in aerospace engineering.

The IH program is designed to address technical challenges and improve understanding of long-range hypersonic flight through an initial full-scale baseline test of an existing hypersonic test vehicle, followed by a series of subscale flight tests, innovative ground-based testing, expanded modeling and simulation, and advanced analytic methods, culminating in a test flight of a full-scale hypersonic X-plane (HX) in 2016. HX is envisioned as a recoverable next-generation configuration augmented with a rocket-based propulsion capability that will enable and reduce risk for highly maneuverable, long-range hypersonic platforms.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/136696/hypersonics-are-the-new-stealth.html
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 14/08/2012 | 17:22 uur
VS test supersnel vliegtuig

Chad Bellay / United States Air Force Toegevoegd: dinsdag 14 aug 2012, 16:29

De Amerikaanse luchtmacht test vandaag een experimenteel vliegtuig, dat zesmaal de snelheid van het geluid moet halen. Het toestel is ontworpen om binnen korte tijd overal ter wereld doelen te kunnen aanvallen.

De krant Los Angeles Times meldt dat het toestel, de X-51 WaveRider, omhoog gebracht wordt onder een B-52 bommenwerper en voor de kust van Californië wordt losgelaten. De X-51 is uitgerust met een raket om snelheid te maken.

De topsnelheid wordt volgens deskundigen gedurende vijf minuten volgehouden.

De vorige test met de X-51 mislukte. Het toestel stortte toen in zee.

Bron: NOS
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: Flyguy op 14/08/2012 | 19:55 uur
Ik las eerst x-15, "hebben ze dat ding weer omhoog gestuurd"!?
;D
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: Ace1 op 14/08/2012 | 22:24 uur
Citaat van: fly3rguy op 14/08/2012 | 19:55 uur
Ik las eerst x-15, "hebben ze dat ding weer omhoog gestuurd"!?
;D

Men stuurt de X-51 Waverider op dezelfde manier in de lucht als de X15 en ook de X-43A scramjet  gebruikt de B52 als lanceer platform.
Je zou ook kunnen zeggen oude wijn in nieuwe wijnzakken?





Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: Lex op 15/08/2012 | 21:39 uur
Supersonisch straalvliegtuig verongelukt

LOS ANGELES - Een Amerikaanse test met een nieuw supersonisch straalvliegtuig is mislukt.

Een halve minuut na vertrek viel de X-51A Waverider in de lucht in stukken uiteen. De brokstukken zijn ten westen van Los Angeles in de Grote Oceaan gestort.

Dat heeft de luchtmacht van de Verenigde Staten woensdag bevestigd.

Het onbemande en vleugelloze straalvliegtuig is ontworpen om zes keer zo snel als het geluid te vliegen. Een vlucht van New York naar Londen zou zo ongeveer een uur duren. Ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA en het Pentagon hopen door het project snellere raketten te kunnen ontwikkelen, zodat ze elk doel in de wereld buitengewoon snel kunnen bereiken.

ANP 
15 augustus 2012 21:28
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: Tanker op 16/08/2012 | 11:33 uur
Jammer, een veelbelovend project lijkt me.....
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 16/08/2012 | 12:04 uur
Citaat van: Tanker op 16/08/2012 | 11:33 uur
Jammer, een veelbelovend project lijkt me.....

Op naar het volgende testmoment.
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 03/05/2013 | 10:35 uur
X-51A Waverider Achieves Hypersonic Goal On Final Flight

By Guy Norris guy / Source: AWIN First

May 02, 2013

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Boeing X-51A Waverider demonstrator successfully achieved sustained, scramjet-powered, air-breathing hypersonic flight above Mach 5 in its final test flight on May 1.

Although the Air Force is not yet commenting on details of the flight, the X-51A is thought to have experienced positive acceleration to speeds in excess of Mach 5 and run for the full duration of the planned powered phase of the test. Based on targets established for the previous test attempt, this could have been as long as 300 sec., followed by an unpowered gliding descent of around 500 sec. prior to impacting the sea in the Pacific Test range west of California. If these times and speeds are confirmed, they will represent new records for sustained, air-breathing hypersonic flight.

The X-51A is intended to prove the viability of a free-flying, scramjet-powered vehicle and is considered an essential building block toward the long-anticipated development of hypersonic weapons and other high-speed platforms. However, despite the partial success of the first flight, which reached Mach 4.88 under scramjet power in May 2010, that mission ended prematurely after a malfunction, as did the second flight in March 2011 and third in August 2012.

Coming in the wake of these disappointing prior tests, the success of the May 1 flight could therefore be pivotal in helping drive further research and development to meet the Air Force's long-term goal of hypersonic capability. The test involved the last of the four vehicles to be built by Boeing and configured with a Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne SJX61 dual-mode ramjet/scramjet engine, and incorporated improvements and lessons learned from the three former flights.

These included better sealing between interfaces in the engine flow-path that are thought to have suffered "burn-through" on the first flight, allowing hot gases to penetrate the vehicle's interior and prematurely ending the flight. Additionally, it incorporated hardware and software changes to counter issues that brought the second flight to a premature end after only 9.5 sec. of powered flight at around Mach 5. On this flight, the vehicle experienced an inlet un-start during the switch to hydrocarbon fuel, effectively blocking flow through the engine and shutting it down. Finally, the mission also included changes to the hypersonic cruiser's control fins, one of which failed on the third mission, causing it to go out of control only 16 sec. into the test while still under boost.

For the final test, as with previous missions, the X-51A, attached to a modified Atacms missile booster, was launched from a B-52H mother ship over the Pacific. The stack separated from the B-52 and the booster fired as planned before the Atacms burned out and detached, and the scramjet ignited.

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_05_02_2013_p0-575769.xml
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 05/05/2013 | 14:47 uur
Boeing X-51 Waverider Sets World Record on Longest Hypersonic Flight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vp-XDVauic&feature=youtu.be&a
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 31/05/2013 | 08:17 uur
Speed is the new stealth

Hypersonic weapons: Building vehicles that fly at five times the speed of sound is amazingly hard, but researchers are trying
Jun 1st 2013  |From the print edition

ON AUGUST 20th 1998 Bill Clinton ordered American warships in the Arabian Sea to fire a volley of more than 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at suspected terrorist training camps near the town of Khost in eastern Afghanistan. The missiles, flying north at about 880kph (550mph), took two hours to reach their target. Several people were killed, but the main target of the attack, Osama bin Laden, left the area shortly before the missiles struck. American spies located the al-Qaeda leader on two other occasions as he moved around Afghanistan in September 2000. But the United States had no weapons able to reach him fast enough.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, American officials decided that they needed to obtain a "prompt global strike" capability, able to deliver conventional explosives anywhere on Earth within an hour or two. One way to do this would be to take existing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and replace the nuclear warheads with standard explosives. The hitch is that ballistic missiles are usually armed with nuclear warheads. A launch could therefore be misconstrued as the start of a nuclear strike, says Arun Prakash, a former Chief of the Naval Staff, the top job in India's navy.

Moreover, ICBMs carrying conventional explosives towards targets in Asia or the Middle East would at first be indistinguishable from those aimed at China or Russia, according to a paper issued by the Congressional Research Service, an American government-research body. This uncertainty might provoke a full-scale nuclear counterattack. In the years after 2001 funding for non-nuclear ballistic missiles was repeatedly cut by Congress, until military planners eventually gave up on the idea. Instead, they have now pinned their hopes on an alternative approach: superfast or "hypersonic" unmanned vehicles that can strike quickly by flying through the atmosphere, and cannot be mistaken for a nuclear missile.

These hypersonic vehicles are not rockets, as ICBMs are, but work in a fundamentally different way. Rockets carry their own fuel, which includes the oxygen needed for combustion in airless space. This fuel is heavy, making rockets practical only for short, vertical flights into space. So engineers are trying to develop lightweight, "air breathing" hypersonic vehicles that can travel at rocket-like speeds while taking oxygen from the atmosphere, as a jet engine does, rather than having to carry it in the form of fuel oxidants.

The term hypersonic technically refers to speeds faster than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5, equivalent to around 6,200kph at sea level and 5,300kph at high altitudes (where the colder, thinner air means the speed of sound is lower). Being able to sustain flight in the atmosphere at such speeds would have many benefits. Hypersonic vehicles would not be subject to existing treaties on ballistic-missile arsenals, for one thing. It is easier to manoeuvre in air than it is in space, making it more feasible to dodge interceptors or change trajectory if a target moves. And by cutting the cost of flying into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the technology could also help reduce the expense of military and civilian access to space.

All this, however, requires a totally different design from the turbofan and turbojet engines that power airliners and fighter jets, few of which can operate beyond speeds of about Mach 2. At higher speeds the jet engines' assemblies of spinning blades can no longer slow incoming air to the subsonic velocities needed for combustion. Faster propulsion relies instead on engines without moving parts. One type, called a ramjet, slows incoming air to subsonic speeds using a carefully shaped inlet to compress and thereby slow the airstream. Ramjets power France's new, nuclear-tipped ASMPA missiles. Carried by Rafale and Mirage fighter jets, they are thought to be able to fly for about 500km at Mach 3, or around 3,700kph.

It's not rocket science

But reaching hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 and above with an air-breathing engine means getting combustion to happen in a stream of supersonic air. Engines that do this are called supersonic-combustion ramjets, or scramjets. They also use a specially shaped inlet to slow the flow of incoming air, but it does not slow down enough to become subsonic. This leaves engineers with a big problem: injecting and igniting fuel in a supersonic airstream is like "lighting a match in a hurricane and keeping it lit," says Russell Cummings, a hypersonic-propulsion expert at California Polytechnic State University.

One way to do it is to use fuel injectors that protrude, at an angle, into the supersonic airstream. They generate small shock waves that mix oxygen with fuel as soon as it is injected. This mixture can be ignited using the energy of bigger shock waves entering the combustion chamber. Another approach is being developed at the Australian Defence Force Academy. In a process known as "cascade ionisation", laser blasts lasting just a few nanoseconds rip electrons off passing molecules, creating pockets of hot plasma in the combustion chamber that serve as sparks.

Scramjet fuel must also be kept away from the wall of the combustion chamber. Otherwise, it might "pre-ignite" before mixing properly, blowing up the vehicle, says Clinton Groth, an engineer at the University of Toronto who is currently doing research at Cambridge University in England (and who has consulted for Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce, two engine-makers). To complicate matters further, scramjets move too fast for their internal temperature and air pressure to be controlled mechanically by adjusting the air intake. Instead, as scramjets accelerate, they must ascend into thinner air at a precise rate to prevent rising heat and pressure from quickening the fuel burn and blowing up the combustion chamber.

In other words, igniting a scramjet is difficult, and keeping it going without exploding is harder still. Moreover scramjets, like ramjets, cannot begin flight on their own power. Because they need to be moving quickly to compress air for combustion, scramjets must first be accelerated by piggybacking on a jet plane or rocket. There are, in short, formidable obstacles to the construction of a scramjet vehicle. Even though the idea has been around since the 1950s, it was not until the 1990s that a scramjet was successfully flight-tested by Russian researchers, working in conjunction with French and American scientists—and some experts doubt that those tests achieved fully supersonic combustion.


HyShot goes supersonic down under

The next step forward came in July 2002, when a British-designed scramjet vehicle was successfully flown in Australia by researchers at the University of Queensland. The HyShot scramjet flew at Mach 7.6 for six seconds. But this was not controlled flight of a scramjet vehicle: instead the HyShot was launched on a rocket into space, and its engine was then ignited as it fell, nose pointing downwards, at hypersonic speed back towards the ground.

More recently America's space agency, NASA, has made progress with two experimental scramjet vehicles, both of which are dropped from a carrier plane and then accelerated using a rocket booster. The unmanned, hydrogen-fuelled X-43A scramjet accelerated to a record Mach 9.68 in November 2004. This was the first fully controlled flight of a scramjet-powered vehicle, though it lasted only ten seconds.

NASA is now concentrating on another test vehicle, the X-51A Waverider. In its first test, carried out in May 2010, the X-51A reached Mach 5, but not a hoped-for Mach 6, during a flight lasting roughly 200 seconds. Subsequent tests in June 2011 and August 2012 both failed. In a test flight on May 1st 2013, however, the X-51A maintained a speed of Mach 5.1 for four minutes, in the longest scramjet flight on record.

The unsheltering sky

In 2010 the head of America's Pacific Command, Admiral Robert Willard, said that a Chinese programme to convert a nuclear ballistic missile into an aircraft-carrier killer, by packing it with conventional explosives, had reached "initial operational capability". The DF-21D, as it is called, is designed to descend from space at hypersonic speed and strike ships in the Western Pacific. Even though the accuracy of the DF-21D's guidance system is unknown, the missile is already altering the balance of power within its range, says Eric McVadon, a consultant on East Asian security and a former US Navy rear-admiral.

"America is slowly losing the strategic advantage that its stealth warplanes have long provided."

Having ruled out such systems due to the "nuclear ambiguity" a launch would cause, and with powered hypersonic vehicles descended from the X-51A still years away, America has begun testing yet another approach. As part of an effort called Project Falcon, the US Air Force and DARPA, the research arm of America's armed forces, have developed hypersonic "boost-glide" vehicles that piggyback on a modified ICBM and achieve hypersonic speeds simply by falling from a high altitude, rather than using a scramjet.

The "hypersonic cruise vehicle" (pictured on previous page), is carried on an ICBM into the lower reaches of space where it separates, and, rather than following an arching ballistic trajectory, glides back to Earth at more than 20,000kph. The first vehicle, tested in April 2010, successfully separated from its ICBM, but about nine minutes later contact was lost. "They were getting good data and then the skin peeled off and it went boom," says Brian Weeden, a former air-force captain and nuclear-missile launch officer stationed in Montana. A test in 2011 also failed.

In spite of such setbacks, research into hypersonic weapons will continue. Building a vehicle capable of gliding at Mach 16 is difficult, but not impossible. America's space shuttle used to re-enter the atmosphere at Mach 25, so fast that friction heated air molecules into a layer of plasma around the craft that radio signals could not penetrate. New "ceramic matrix composites" show great heat-shielding promise, says Sankar Sambasivan, the boss of Applied Thin Films, a company in Illinois that makes parts for military aircraft.

Testing equipment is also improving. Heat and pressure sensors, and even video cameras, can be embedded in vehicles to gather data as they fly, providing "a level of detail and fidelity that we've never had before," says Ken Anderson, head of hypersonic air vehicles at Australia's Defence Science and Technology Organisation. Better wind tunnels help, too. The one at Belgium's Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics can generate short blasts of air at Mach 14. This is done by cooling the test chamber, reducing the speed of sound and thereby increasing the Mach number of air forced in with a piston.

Last year a DARPA statement noted that America is gradually losing the "strategic advantage" that its stealth warplanes have long provided, as other countries' stealth and counter-stealth capabilities continue to improve. Instead, DARPA suggested, America will need "the new stealth" of hypersonic vehicles. Similarly, Russia's deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, remarked last year that the design of hypersonic missiles had become a priority for the country. Getting anything to work at all under hypersonic conditions is extraordinarily difficult—but the effort continues even so.

http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21578522-hypersonic-weapons-building-vehicles-fly-five-times-speed-sound


Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 25/08/2014 | 19:52 uur
Nieuw Amerikaans wapen ontploft bij test

25 augustus 2014

Een nieuw ontwikkeld wapen van het Amerikaanse leger is ontploft tijdens een testlancering.

Er raakte niemand gewond, toen het zogenoemde geavanceerde hypersoon wapen weer terugviel op de grond van het lanceercomplex in Alaska. Het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie heeft niet verder gespecificeerd om wat voor wapen het precies gaat.

Wel is duidelijk dat het onderdeel is van een speciaal programma, waar de Verenigde Staten nog aan werken. Dat programma moet ervoor zorgen dat overal ter wereld binnen een uur een doelwit kan worden vernield, als de juiste data en toestemmingen binnen zijn.

RTL Nieuws / ANP
Titel: Re:US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 02/06/2015 | 10:29 uur
AF Chief Scientist: Air Force Working on New Hypersonic Air Vehicle

Military.com Jun 01, 2015 | by Kris Osborn

Scientists with the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Pentagon's research arm are working to build a new hypersonic air vehicle that can travel at speeds up to Mach 5 while carrying guidance systems and other materials.

Air Force Chief Scientist Mica Endsley said the service wants to build upon the successful hypersonic test flight of the X-51 Waverider 60,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean in May of 2013.

Endsley said the Air Force and DARPA, the Pentagon's research entity, plan to have a new and improved hypersonic air vehicle by 2023.

"X-51 was really a proof of concept test. It showed that you could get a scram jet engine, launch it off an aircraft and it could go hypersonic. It was able to go more than Mach 5 until it ran out of fuel. It was a very successful test of an airborne hypersonic weapons system," Endsley said.

The 2013 test flight, which wound up being the longest air-breathing hypersonic flight ever, wrapped up a $300 million technology demonstration program beginning in 2004, Air Force officials said.

A B-52H Stratofortress carried the X-51A on its wing before it was released at 50,000 feet and accelerated up to Mach 4.8 in 26 seconds. As the scramjet climbed to 60,000 feet it accelerated to Mach 5.1.

The X-51 was also able to send back data before crashing into the ocean -- the kind of information now being used by scientists to engineer a more complete hypersonic vehicle.

"After exhausting its 240-second fuel supply, the vehicle continued to send back telemetry data until it splashed down into the ocean and was destroyed as designed," according to an Air Force statement. "At impact, 370 seconds of data were collected from the experiment."

Endsley added that the next-generation effort is not merely aimed at creating another scramjet but rather engineering a much more comprehensive hypersonic air vehicle.

"What they are trying to do now is build the whole system so that it is not just about the engine. You have to have materials that can operate at the kind of temperatures you have when you are going at hypersonic speeds. You have to have guidance systems that will function when you are going at those types of speeds. There are a bunch of technological challenges that have to be addressed to make a functioning system that will work," she said.

The new air vehicle effort will progress alongside an Air Force hypersonic weapons program. While today's cruise missiles travel at speeds up to 600 miles per hour, hypersonic weapons will be able to reach speeds of Mach 5 to Mach 10, Air Force officials said.

The new air vehicle could be used to transport sensors, equipment or weaponry in the future, depending upon how the technology develops.
Also, Pentagon officials have said that hypersonic aircraft are expected to be much less expensive than traditional turbine engines because they require fewer parts.

Recognizing the countries like China have been testing and developing hypersonic missiles, Pentagon and Air Force officials see hypersonic flight as integral to the future.

"Certainly, the U.S. is not the only country involved in developing hypersonic weapons. They are showing a lot of capability in this area. The advantage of hypersonics is not just that something goes very fast -- but that it can go great distances at those speeds," Endsley added.

She explained that hypersonic flight could speed up a five hour flight from New York to Los Angeles to about 30 minutes. That being said, the speed of acceleration required for hypersonic flight precludes the scientific possibility of humans being able to travel at that speed.

-- Kris Osborn can be reached at Kris.Osborn@military.com

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/06/01/chief-scientist-air-force-working-on-new-hypersonic-air-vehicle.html
Titel: Re: US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: Ronald Elzenga op 05/05/2017 | 20:56 uur
Need for Speed: Will Hypersonic Weapons Pay Off?
By James Hasik
May 05, 2017

Last month, Guy Norris reported for Aviation Week & Space Technology on how the Chinese government has revealed a national plan for hypersonic aircraft research. On this side of the Pacific, people have been getting stressed. Norris's earlier report in February covered a classified assessment within the US government that warned of possible breakthroughs in Chinese hypersonic technology, and of how American efforts were "lacking urgency." Norris, Joe Anselmo, and Graham Warwick even produced a Check Six podcast episode on the issue. But during the previous administration, the Army, Navy, and Air Force Departments did all seem to be talking up new ideas for fast-moving weapons. So does the Pentagon need to be putting more money there? Does any other defense ministry? Perhaps, but sometimes necessity is truncated by feasibility. For with hypersonics, the tactical advantages are great, but so are the technical challenges.

There are at least three ways to make weapons go hypersonic: making a missile that flies very fast, firing a very skinny projectile with a discarding sabot from a cannon, or just firing a projectile from a railgun. As Norris noted, American research on hypersonic missiles has been underway in "starts and stops" since 1947. Tank guns have been firing discarding sabot rounds since the 1940s. When "the long rod" exits the barrel of Rheinmetall's famous 120 mm L/44 or L/55, the main guns for Abrams and Leopard 2 tanks, it's moving at about Mach 5. Not much stands in the way of that. It's perhaps no surprise that Will Roper's Strategic Capabilities Office at the Pentagon has recently gotten enthused about equipping longer-range naval guns with even longer-range "Hyper-Velocity Projectiles" (HVPs). Railguns have been discussed for decades; of late, BAE Systems and General Atomics have each been working on prototypes, and DRS has been working on the necessary power systems.


For this reason, the Wall Street Journal recently called the Navy's proposed Mach 7 railgun projectile a "battlefield meteorite with the power to blow holes in enemy ships and level terrorist camps." (After all, in The Expanse, when the Martians divert power to the railguns, you know they're getting serious.) However one attains those kinds of velocities, the kinetic energy alone is enough to do great damage. Hypersonic weapons are also very difficult to intercept; just note the herculean efforts expended on anti-ballistic missile defense: shooting the things down is considerably more expensive, and that leads to unfavorable economics against the inbounds. But for all that awesomeness, there are at least eight serious issues with going so very fast.

Shock. Launching a projectile to Mach 7 over a militarily useful barrel length means accelerating the little guy at 20,000 times gravity. That's several times what cannon rounds experience in conventional guns. Plenty of munitions makers—Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Alliant Techsystems, Leonardo, Rheinmetall, Denel, etc.—have learned to shock-harden the electronics of precision-guided shells to the lesser extreme. As the Navy is still looking for sources of supply, shock-hardening railgun and chemically-propelled long darts is apparently proving a bit more challenging.

Sensing. At high Mach numbers, aero-structures become encased in plasma sheaths—envelopes of disassociated nuclei and electronics, of high conductivity, that interfere with all electromagnetic transmissions. Think about how many astronaut movies feature those tense few minutes when mission control can't talk to the capsule during atmospheric reentry. Making missiles or munitions that don't fly blindly hypersonically requires datalinks and sensors that can operate through that mess. The US Air Force started looking for a way to address the problem in the late 1950s. It's still far from solved.

Control. With direct fire, one might not need much guidance for hypersonic weapons, as the atmospheric effects are insignificant. But elevate the barrel, and every hundredth of a milliradian of deviation from true means a meter off at 100 kilometers range. Get anything wrong about the ballistic calculations, and terminal guidance is required from those really robust sensors. Against maneuvering targets at long range, like ingressing aircraft, that's even more important. The problem is that Mach 7 tends, as a former railgun program manager once told me, to "burn the control surfaces off the weapon" as it flies. Move a missile faster and further, and the problem gets worse. Beverley McKeon of CalTech has recently suggested (and patented) the idea of "morphable... ionic polymer metal composites" to control flight at those speeds. That sounds awesome, but not of an advanced TRL.

Air resistance. Perhaps fortunately for projectiles, those speeds don't last very long. Without propulsion, on long flights, fluid dynamics eventually return the round to its aerodynamic terminal velocity. That means that at long ranges, a railgun or cannon round will be arriving at roughly the speed of any conventionally fired round. At that point, the added smash of hypersonics would require the constant propulsion of a missile. That, in turn, is expensive. There's a reason that passengers aren't flown across the Atlantic in Concords anymore; those speeds were never economical for large loads.

Highly focused effects. Consider a 127 mm solid slug fired from a railgun at Mach 7. That projectile could put about 90 mega-joules of kinetic energy on a target at close range. That's about the energetic output of 21 kilograms of high-explosive fill, or roughly what a 127 mm HE round would carry. But for the long range, instant gratification, and general awesomeness of the railgun concept, one might wonder what's wrong with today's basic five-inch. The benefit is that all that energy is focused on the point of impact. Like a tungsten penetrator from a tank gun, that tends to go through most things, making for an incredible bunker-buster. The drawback is that the destruction is very localized. Contrary to the Wall Street Journal's description, firing railgun rounds at a camp would mostly put deep holes in the ground, and just occasionally splatter a terrorist if one were unfortunate to be standing in the wrong place.

Electromagnetic signature. Putting scores of megawatts into the armature of a railgun produces a huge electromagnetic signature. As with the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) on the Ford-class aircraft carriers, one might wonder whether an enemy could target those pulses. The Navy has built shielding into its catapults, but a railgun could make for a whole other magnitude of noisy—effectively building in its own counter-battery signal.

Barrel wear. The US Navy's five-inch gun barrels have a service life of about 8,000 rounds, courtesy of prime contractor BAE Systems and the depot in Louisville. The Navy currently thinks that it can get 400 rounds out of a railgun, but the service is hoping for a few thousand. The lower figure is just getting close to operationally interesting. The higher combustion temperatures needed for propelling those HVPs would also circumscribe the barrel lives of the Navy's existing five-inch guns.

Power. Shooting with chemical propellants from the five-inch is appealing because it's right now the only option. Only three warships afloat anywhere have enough power to fire up a big railgun: the US Navy's three Zumwalt-class destroyers, which each have capacity for 75 megawatts of electrical output. The trouble is that each already has two 155 mm Advanced Gun Systems, which throw rounds 83 nautical miles (assuming that the Navy actually buys the rounds). As of today, there's no other answer to the power problem in the procurement pipeline.

Now, for a moment, suppose all these problems were addressable. Hypersonics, after all, are clearly attracting interest. The Mitchell Institute studied the hypersonic issue last year. The American Enterprise Institute studied it this year. The Congressional Research Service has released its own secret report. The development of relatively inexpensive, controllable, hypersonic projectiles might actually "change the paradigm of missile defense," and shore bombardment too. If guns could be so useful, navies might not build fleets of air defense ships with 50 to 100 relatively expensive missiles, but just one or two guns. They might, instead, build ships like the old French anti-aircraft cruiser De Grasse, which sported 16 (yes, sixteen) five-inch guns along her 12,350 tons when she was completed in 1954. My Marine Corps friends are doubtlessly perking up at the idea of clouds of precision-guided five-inch raining down on their enemies. Perhaps it's an idea so crazy it might just work. Or, there's maybe a reason no one has tried it yet.

James Hasik is a senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.

http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/05/05/need_for_speed_will_hypersonic_weapons_pay_off_111317.html
Titel: Re: US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 21/09/2017 | 08:27 uur
Hypersonic flight: Threat or opportunity?

http://newatlas.com/hypersonic-flight/50801/ via @nwtls
Titel: Re: US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 08/11/2017 | 07:43 uur
US Navy tests hypersonic missiles that can hit any target on Earth in under an hour

http://ibt.uk/A6uHl?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=/us-navy-tests-hypersonic-missiles-that-can-hit-any-target-earth-under-hour-1646333
Titel: Re: US army tests hypersonic weapon over the Pacific
Bericht door: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 04/12/2017 | 07:48 uur
The Hypersonic Arms Race Heats Up

http://thebea.st/2nreEoY?source=twitter&via=desktop via @thedailybeast