US Army and Navy launch rocket successfully testing hypersonic weapon experiments at Nasa facility

UNITED STATES

The US military has a number of hypersonic weapons programs in the Navy, Army, and Air Force, but most of them are still in development and highly classified.

However, the known programs are all more conventional hypersonic weapons that strike from high altitudes, rather than orbital bombing systems that strike from space, which the Chinese appeared to have developed this week.

The only US hypersonic weapon known to have been successfully tested is the Air Force’s GM-183 ARRW, which is designed to be launched from a large bomber aircraft.

It then accelerates to hypersonic speeds at speeds of up to 15,345 mph using a supersonic combustion engine to hit targets within a 1,000 mile radius. Donald Trump referred to a “super duper missile” while in office and this is believed to be the AGM-183 ARRW.

The Navy submarine that launched the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon is expected to be operational in 2023 and have a range of 1,725 ​​miles.

Darpa, the US military’s science wing, recently announced successful tests of what it called a HAWC (Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept) missile, but kept details such as range, speed and payload secret.

The missile uses oxygen in the atmosphere as part of its fuel – which is the first successful test of that class of weapons since 2013.

The missile, which was built by Raytheon, was released from a plane just “seconds” before Northrop Grumman’s scramjet engine started, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said.

The engine works by compressing the incoming air with hydrocarbon fuel to create a rapid airflow mixture that can reach more than 1,700 meters per second, or five times the speed of sound.

Earlier this year, a test of a US Air Force hypersonic missile was halted after it failed to complete its launch sequence.

On March 19 last year, the Pentagon tested a hypersonic glider at its Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii. It considered the test a success and “an important milestone toward the department’s goal of using hypersonic warfare capabilities in the early to mid-2020s.”

Unlike Russia, the United States says it does not develop hypersonic weapons for use with a nuclear warhead. As a result, an American hypersonic weapon will have to be more accurate, which poses additional technical challenges.

In 2004, NASA’s experimental unmanned hypersonic plane X-43 reached a speed of 7,366 mph (Mach 9.6) using a scramjet engine, setting the current record.

In 2019, DailyMail.com reported that the rocket developed by Raytheon and Northrop Grumman would use a motor created by a 3D printer.

Last year, DARPA said it was partnering with Aerojet Rocketdyne on a nearly $20 million project to develop a hypersonic missile that could intercept enemy missiles in mid-air.

RUSSIA

Russia recently launched a hypersonic missile, the Zircon, from a submarine, and has been in service since late 2019 with the hypersonic nuclear Avangard missiles. The Avangard can travel up to Mach 27, changing course and altitude.

The range of the Russian hypersonic missile, the Zircon, is 621 miles at a speed of 9,800 mph.

But the rocket flies under the atmosphere, using fuel to propel itself to hypersonic speeds instead of Earth’s orbit.

Earlier this month, Russia announced that it had successfully fired the Zircon from a nuclear submarine for the first time.

The 6,670 mph weapon hit a target in the Barents Sea according to the Moscow Defense Ministry, which claims the missile is capable of Mach-9 speeds and is able to evade all western defenses.

Russia said it had completed flight tests of a frigate’s new-age missile – Admiral Gorshkov – and a coastal mountain, but it had not previously been launched from a submarine.

The Zircon has been identified by Moscow’s state-controlled TV as Vladimir Putin’s weapon of choice to wipe out US coastal cities in the event of a nuclear conflict.

He has declared the missile “truly unparalleled anywhere in the world,” and the Russians have boasted that it is “unstoppable” by Western defenses.

Putin first announced the development of a series of new hypersonic weapons in 2018, insisting they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a US-built missile defense shield.

The Zircon is due to enter service next year and will first be deployed via the Admiral Golovko frigate which contains significant stealth technology.

An important use of the missile is to take out enemy ships, and reports have suggested that its maximum range is between 188 and 620 miles.

But there are unconfirmed reports that the actual range is about 1,200 miles.

The design and development of the missile system has been carried out in the utmost secrecy, and Putin has warned that foreign spies have tried to steal the secrets.

It is one of a number of hypersonic missiles that Russia is deploying, including the 188-ton Sarmat – known in the West as Satan-2 – that will be the largest beast in Russia’s nuclear arsenal, due for testing and deployment in the fall. is scheduled for next week. year.

In May, Russia said it was testing three “invincible” hypersonic “Satan 2” missiles that some said could wipe out areas the size of England and Wales.

CHINA

The hypersonic orbital bombing system China tested in August is reported to reach a top speed of 21,000 mph and strike from space.

The core concept of China’s “new” weapon — putting a warhead into orbit and orbiting the Earth before hitting a target — was first developed by the Soviets in the 1960s.

It was called a fractional orbital bombardment system or FOBS and was developed to evade powerful US radar arrays and missile defense systems.

Those systems work by detecting launches from ICBMs — very long-range missiles that can be tipped with nuclear weapons — and tracking them into space, then firing the warheads as they come down, hoping to blow them up before hitting their targets. touch.

This is possible because ICBMs and their warheads follow a predictable trajectory that rises high into space — making them relatively easy to spot and allow defense teams to calculate what they’re aiming at so they can be blasted out of the sky.

FOBS try to nullify this defense by firing their warheads along a much flatter trajectory — supported by Earth’s gravity.

This means that they are within the range of many radar detection arrays and are more difficult to track. It also makes it much harder to shoot the warheads because their trajectory is harder to calculate.

Using orbit makes a warhead’s range potentially unlimited, meaning it can be fired at its target from any direction. This helps prevent radar systems that generally point to a fixed spot in the sky – in the case of America, above the North Pole.

Meanwhile, in 2019, China also unveiled a hypersonic medium-range missile, the DF-17, which can travel about 2,000 kilometers and carry nuclear warheads.

In October, China deployed the DF 17 missile to coastal areas in preparation for a possible invasion of Taiwan.

The weapon has a maximum range of 2,500 kilometers and is capable of reaching speeds of up to 7,680 miles per hour (12,360 kph) — or 10 times the speed of sound — while carrying a warhead, according to previous reports.

It has been billed as ‘a death sentence’ for aircraft carriers within its range.

Hypersonic rockets travel at more than five times the speed of sound in the upper atmosphere — or about 6,200 km per hour (3,850 mph). This is slower than an intercontinental ballistic missile, but the shape of a hypersonic gliding vehicle allows it to maneuver towards a target or away from defenses.

Combining a glider vehicle with a rocket that can partially launch it into Earth orbit — a so-called fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) — could strip opponents of reaction time and traditional defense mechanisms.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), on the other hand, carry warheads on ballistic orbits that travel into space but never reach Earth orbit.

China stressed on Monday that the August test was a routine test for a spacecraft rather than a rocket.