Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2009
- Messages
- 9,560
- Reaction score
- 1,748
Northrop And Raytheon Have Been Secretly Working On Scramjet Powered Hypersonic Missile
The weapon, which uses an entirely 3D-printed scramjet engine, is set to fly for the first time in "the near future." 18 Jun 2019
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...working-on-scamjet-powered-hypersonic-missile
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon have revealed that they have been working together on a scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile, which uses an engine that is entirely 3D-printed. Their design is competing against one from Lockheed Martin under the Defense Advanced Research Project's Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept program, or HAWC.
The two companies publicly announced their partnership at the 2019 Paris Air Show on June 18, 2019, but they have been working together secretly for years on HAWC, according to Aviation Week. DARPA began the HAWC program in 2014, in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
"We have a flight test planned for the near future where we will begin flying this particular class of weapon system," Tom Bussing, the Vice President of Raytheon's advanced missile system division, told reporters in Paris. "This weapon is fundamentally game-changing. There’s nothing like it."
Raytheon had revealed concept art of the missile ahead of the Paris Air Show. From what we can see so far, the design has a relatively typical layout for this weapon concept, with a rocket booster attached to the rear of the main scramjet-powered weapon. The booster motor will accelerate the missile to near hypersonic speed in order for the scramjet to work properly, before falling away.
No launch, just a shape test:
Hypersonic Missiles Are Unstoppable. And They’re Starting a New Global Arms Race.
The new weapons — which could travel at more than 15 times the speed of sound with terrifying accuracy — threaten to change the nature of warfare.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/magazine/hypersonic-missiles.html
In 2018, Congress expressed its consensus in a law requiring that an American hypersonic weapon be operational by October 2022. This year, the Trump administration’s proposed defense budget included $2.6 billion for hypersonics, and national security industry experts project that the annual budget will reach $5 billion by the middle of the next decade. The immediate aim is to create two deployable systems within three years. Key funding is likely to be approved this summer.
Although hypersonic missiles can in theory carry nuclear warheads, those being developed by the United States will only be equipped with small conventional explosives. With a length between just five and 10 feet, weighing about 500 pounds and encased in materials like ceramic and carbon fiber composites or nickel-chromium superalloys, the missiles function like nearly invisible power drills that smash holes in their targets, to catastrophic effect. After their launch — whether from the ground, from airplanes or from submarines — they are pulled by gravity as they descend from a powered ascent, or propelled by highly advanced engines. The missiles’ kinetic energy at the time of impact, at speeds of at least 1,150 miles per hour, makes them powerful enough to penetrate any building material or armored plating with the force of three to four tons of TNT.
Within the next decade, these new weapons could undertake a task long imagined for nuclear arms: a first strike against another nation’s government or arsenals, interrupting key chains of communication and disabling some of its retaliatory forces, all without the radioactive fallout and special condemnation that might accompany the detonation of nuclear warheads. That’s why a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report said in 2016 that hypersonics aren’t “simply evolutionary threats” to the United States but could in the hands of enemies “challenge this nation’s tenets of global vigilance, reach and power.”
The weapon, which uses an entirely 3D-printed scramjet engine, is set to fly for the first time in "the near future." 18 Jun 2019
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...working-on-scamjet-powered-hypersonic-missile
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon have revealed that they have been working together on a scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile, which uses an engine that is entirely 3D-printed. Their design is competing against one from Lockheed Martin under the Defense Advanced Research Project's Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept program, or HAWC.
The two companies publicly announced their partnership at the 2019 Paris Air Show on June 18, 2019, but they have been working together secretly for years on HAWC, according to Aviation Week. DARPA began the HAWC program in 2014, in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
"We have a flight test planned for the near future where we will begin flying this particular class of weapon system," Tom Bussing, the Vice President of Raytheon's advanced missile system division, told reporters in Paris. "This weapon is fundamentally game-changing. There’s nothing like it."
Raytheon had revealed concept art of the missile ahead of the Paris Air Show. From what we can see so far, the design has a relatively typical layout for this weapon concept, with a rocket booster attached to the rear of the main scramjet-powered weapon. The booster motor will accelerate the missile to near hypersonic speed in order for the scramjet to work properly, before falling away.
No launch, just a shape test:
Hypersonic Missiles Are Unstoppable. And They’re Starting a New Global Arms Race.
The new weapons — which could travel at more than 15 times the speed of sound with terrifying accuracy — threaten to change the nature of warfare.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/magazine/hypersonic-missiles.html
In 2018, Congress expressed its consensus in a law requiring that an American hypersonic weapon be operational by October 2022. This year, the Trump administration’s proposed defense budget included $2.6 billion for hypersonics, and national security industry experts project that the annual budget will reach $5 billion by the middle of the next decade. The immediate aim is to create two deployable systems within three years. Key funding is likely to be approved this summer.
Although hypersonic missiles can in theory carry nuclear warheads, those being developed by the United States will only be equipped with small conventional explosives. With a length between just five and 10 feet, weighing about 500 pounds and encased in materials like ceramic and carbon fiber composites or nickel-chromium superalloys, the missiles function like nearly invisible power drills that smash holes in their targets, to catastrophic effect. After their launch — whether from the ground, from airplanes or from submarines — they are pulled by gravity as they descend from a powered ascent, or propelled by highly advanced engines. The missiles’ kinetic energy at the time of impact, at speeds of at least 1,150 miles per hour, makes them powerful enough to penetrate any building material or armored plating with the force of three to four tons of TNT.
Within the next decade, these new weapons could undertake a task long imagined for nuclear arms: a first strike against another nation’s government or arsenals, interrupting key chains of communication and disabling some of its retaliatory forces, all without the radioactive fallout and special condemnation that might accompany the detonation of nuclear warheads. That’s why a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report said in 2016 that hypersonics aren’t “simply evolutionary threats” to the United States but could in the hands of enemies “challenge this nation’s tenets of global vigilance, reach and power.”
