US (& Allies) Hypersonic developments and missiles

Big article


Alerts from the Federal Aviation Administration strongly suggest that the U.S. Air Force's first flight test of its AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon hypersonic missile, or ARRW, is imminent. The recent arrival of the U.S. Army's missile range instrumentation ship USAV Worthy in San Diego and of one of NASA's WB-57F aircraft, which can be configured to help gather data from missile tests, at Naval Air Station Point Mugu outside of Los Angeles, also point to an impending launch.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39975/signs-point-to-imminent-debut-flight-test-of-the-air-forces-first-hypersonic-missile

Test of the booster, not the missile itself.

Ooops.



WASHINGTON — The first rocket booster test of the U.S. Air Force’s hypersonic AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon failed when the vehicle did not launch during an April 5 flight.

During tests over Point Mugu Sea Range off the coast of California, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber attempted to launch the ARRW booster vehicle. However, “the test missile was not able to complete its launch sequence” and the bomber returned to Edwards Air Force Base, California, with the test vehicle, the Air Force said in a statement.

The service plans to study the missile to understand why it didn’t launch, then make alterations and attempt to fire it in a future test, the service said.

“The ARRW program has been pushing boundaries since its inception and taking calculated risks to move this important capability forward,” said Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, the Air Force’s program executive officer for its armaments directorate. “While not launching was disappointing, the recent test provided invaluable information to learn from and continue ahead. This is why we test.”

Aside from demonstrating the safe separation of the ARRW booster from the B-52 during the April 5 test, the Air Force had intended to evaluate the performance of the missile at operational speeds through ignition and the boost phase, as well as simulate the separation of the booster from the glide vehicle.

The test was carried out by the 419th Flight Test Squadron and the Global Power Bomber Combined Test Force at Edwards AFB.

The ARRW test missile was delivered to the base on March 1, the service said in a March 5 release, and the first booster test flight was due to follow aboard a B-52 bomber “in the next 30 days.”
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“The BTF-1 test vehicle is complete and is progressing through ground testing to verify its readiness for flight. The team has successfully dealt with COVID challenges and resolved technical findings not uncommon in a first-of-a-kind weapon system. We have minimized schedule delays while maintaining a laser focus on engineering rigor,” Collins said then, according to the news release.

The service plans to conduct additional booster and all-up-round test flights throughout 2021. The ARRW program previously flew seven captive carriage flight tests, where the weapon is carried by an aircraft but not released, allowing for the service to collect data on how the weapon impacts the flight profile of the aircraft.

The Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $480 million for ARRW development activities in 2018, including the critical design review, testing and production readiness support.

In fiscal 2021, Congress allotted $386 million to the Air Force for hypersonic prototyping — an increase of $5 million over the service’s budget request. But that funding came with sacrifices. Last year, the Air Force announced that it would cancel a separate hypersonic weapons program, the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon also produced by Lockheed, due to budget constraints that forced the service to downselect to a single effort.

Although the HCSW program had shown promise, ARRW had a more “unique glide body design” when compared to HCSW or some of the other hypersonic weapons under development by the Navy and Army, a service spokeswoman said at the time.

Both ARRW and HCSW are boost glide hypersonic weapons, which fly just below space, but the service is also interested in hypersonic cruise missiles that would be able to take a flight path with lower trajectories.

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/04/06/the-first-flight-test-of-the-air-forces-air-launched-hypersonic-booster-didnt-go-as-planned/

That is how it looks like when you need to test a missile that does not actually exist

LMFS wrote:That is how it looks like when you need to test a missile that does not actually exist

The reason why it failed is that they forget to drench the missile in maple syrup. How could their wunderwaffle function properly without it's appropriate lubricant?

BTW a US psuedo expert had the nerve to say Zircon is a 'wunderwaffle' when Uncle Sham's hypersuckass programs are already dead-on-arrival.

Tsirkon wunderwaffle

https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1379015456938360835

Who designed this thing ? SpaceX ?

Update article


The U.S. Army has finally provided an official range for its future Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, or LRHW. This range figure notably means it would have been prohibited under the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, that the United States and Russia were parties to until 2019. This disclosure also follows criticism earlier this year from a senior Air Force officer about the utility of this weapon, especially in the Pacific region.

"The Long Range Hypersonic Weapon provides a capability at a distance greater than 2,775 km," an Army spokesperson said, according to Breaking Defense. This means that the LRHW can strike targets at least 1,725 miles away. For comparison, the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missile, the longest-range ground-based missile system currently in Army service, can only reach targets out to 300 kilometers, or close to 186 miles.
US Army

The complete LRHW missile consists of a large rocket booster with an unpowered hypersonic boost-glide vehicle on top. The rocket is used to loft the conical boost-glide vehicle to a desired speed and altitude. The vehicle then detaches and comes zooming back down toward its target along an atmospheric flight trajectory at hypersonic velocity, defined as anything above Mach 5.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40584/the-army-has-finally-revealed-the-range-its-new-hypersonic-weapon

Iskanders range was limited to 480km by the INF treaty... it would be very very easy to add a stage or two and add a scramjet motor stage and boost its flight range to anything they like.

Zircon is an anti ship missile intended for sinking US carriers and the ships operating with them.

The US and Russia have no weapons in that flight range simply because previously such weapons were banned.

Now that they are not banned any more Russia can develop all sorts of intermediate range weapons to fill the gap.

The main difference is that Russia has a working scramjet motor able to operate at mach 10 in a missile just about to enter serial production and service.

The US does not.

Russia could simply design a truck mounted missile with a bigger fuel tank than Zircon and get any range they like...

Iskander is a much longer ranged missile without mods. Its range is only 500 km when incorporating evasive maneuvers within its trajectory.

Arrow wrote:The range is much larger than the land Iskander and Cirkon.

Iskander old short range missile

We don't know range of Zircon

And range of this new one is definitely not much larger than potential land version of Kinzhal

https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/b-52-completes-long-range-kill-chain-with-simulated-hypersonic-missile-attack/143676.article

The US Air Force (USAF) demonstrated a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber carrying out a simulated hypersonic missile strike using targeting data from sensors positioned more than 1,000nm (1,850km) away.

“The bomber then was able to successfully take a simulated shot of the target from 600nm away using an AGM-183 Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW)”, says the USAF. “This was a successful showcase of beyond-line of sight kill chain employment, and notably, was a success in the highly contested and realistic threat environment that Northern Edge provides”.

Its a "simulated" launch of a "notional" and currently fictitious "missile" - take it out.

Iskander could fly further simply by adopting a ballistic trajectory and not manouvering, but in doing so would make it seriously vulnerable to interception despite its high speed.

Iskander is based on the design of older less capable missiles but those earlier missiles didn't have range restrictions so their range was much better.

The only reason Iskander has a 480km range is because of the limitations of the INF treaty.

Those limitations are gone, but Iskander is widely deployed.

Using the new more powerful rocket fuel and a scramjet motor they could a massively longer ranged missile that can manouver all the way to target... a scramjet motor means it carries three times more fuel by weight than a solid propellent rocket, and it can throttle control its thrust levels all the way to the target to most efficiently use that fuel as well.

Plus the scramjet motor exists and the new rocket fuel exists and if they make it similar in size and shape to the existing Iskander missile they could deploy it to existing vehicles already deployed in Europe...

lyle6 wrote:Its a "simulated" launch of a "notional" and currently fictitious "missile" - take it out.

It was test of the sensors for the missilesystem. And it worked.

At night I can see satellites flying above my house. Is this proof that I can shot them down successfully? No, because I don´t have a working missile.

Hole wrote:At night I can see satellites flying above my house. Is this proof that I can shot them down successfully? No, because I don´t have a working missile.

Again the test was for the sensors....nothing else.
The sensors worked just fine, how can they test the missile itself if they dont have it yet.

So nothing important happened... the problem is the scramjet motors... they can mount sensors on all sorts of things to test including Minuteman ICBMs, but without suitable propulsion systems working it doesn't mean anything.

https://twitter.com/MIL_STD/status/1398366341267136517?s=19

dino00 wrote:https://twitter.com/MIL_STD/status/1398366341267136517?s=19

According to Bolton the US already had this tech.

thegopnik wrote:Wish them luck https://newatlas.com/aircraft/oblique-wave-detonation-engine-hypersonic-ucf/ although I have not heard much reports as much as I have on Russia in this field.

There has been a lot of college level research in the US on detonation engines.
The main difference is that the Russians already have the industry working on engines.
They have gone past the US efforts a long time ago I think.

lancelot wrote:

thegopnik wrote:Wish them luck https://newatlas.com/aircraft/oblique-wave-detonation-engine-hypersonic-ucf/ although I have not heard much reports as much as I have on Russia in this field.

There has been a lot of college level research in the US on detonation engines.
The main difference is that the Russians already have the industry working on engines.
They have gone past the US efforts a long time ago I think.

There is little information on what industrial development there is of such engines in the USA or even outside Russia, but for sure this
is something that cannot be developed in research papers. I think there is a lot of incentive to develop pulse detonation engines
on account of overcoming the Brayton cycle limits.

That's fast but its not hypersonic so I'm sure the figures are wrong

Steve Trimble
@TheDEWLine
· 2 Jun
Speaking at live CSIS webcast, DOD hypersonic director Mike White says today that US hypersonic weapons now in development can hit targets 500 miles away in 10 minutes. If you do the calculation, that equates to an average speed of Mach 4 over the 10 minute period.