EXPERIMENTS IN HYPERSPEED
HYPER VS. SUPERSONIC
“Hypersonic” describes any speed faster than five times the speed of sound, which is roughly 760 miles per hour at sea level. Multiply that by five and you have a weapon that travels at least 3,800 miles per hour or more. But is speed enough to change the game? Does a missile flying at Mach 7 outperform one at Mach 3 on metrics other than speed? Apart from flying very fast, what does DOD—and what do its adversaries—think hypersonic weapons can accomplish?
If a targeted country does not know whether the weapon due to arrive in minutes is carrying a conventional or a nuclear warhead, would it take the risk of leaving what could be a nuclear strike unchallenged?
MACH 20, ANYONE?
This illustration depicts the Defense Advanced Research Products Agency’s (DARPA) Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle as it emerges from its rocket nose cone and prepares to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. DARPA has conducted two test flights of the vehicle; in the second, in 2011, the HTV reached a speed of Mach 20 before losing control. (Image courtesy of DARPA)
“It’s really meant to kick the door open,” said Bob Strider, hypersonics chief at the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, “and then allow other assets to come in.” (The door, in this anal- ogy, is closed by the anti-access and area denial measures a country could deploy to prevent others from entering or passing through a given area of land, air or sea.) Strider oversees the Army’s contributions to the Conventional Prompt Global Strike technology demonstration program, to support the building of a ground-launched hypersonic weapon. Te Army conducted two technology demonstration flights of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon—one
58 Army AL&T Magazine October-December 2018
successful, in 2011, and one aborted in 2014 after testers detected an anomaly with the booster seconds into the flight.
Te Army, specifically, is after a long-range missile that redefines long range—Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley has stressed that he wants to see “10x” improvements.
“We, the Army, have as our number one priority for modernization long-range precision fires; a subset of that is the hyper- sonic piece to it,” Milley said March 15 in testimony before the House Appropri- ations Subcommittee on Defense. What’s publicly known about DOD hypersonic progress suggests that hypersonics offer
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144
