How a Missile could be a reusable one..?
If my memory serves me right, I attended a seminar a way back in India.Time was alloted to put some details about the developments going in this field.DRDO has ground tested Scramjet combustor for more than 20Sec in a series of tests.
This 20sec duration itself allows any hypersonic missile to do a more than 50km final phase flight at over Mach 7 speed.This means the missile will be a two stage and gathers O2 while it burns its 1st stage in low hypersonic flight.And the final stage( hypersonic stage) kicks off during the last 50km.
But this concept more works for Anti-ship targets than compared to land-based.
AShM cruising at Mach 7 technically has 49 times the punch power than any AShM flying at sub-sonic speeds( like Harpoon,...).The last 20 Sec flight will be sea skimming one, means giving less or no chance for the enemy to react.
Technically 20-50km is the maximum LOS for any ship against sea skimmers. So Brahmos-II might go for the same initially.
But there are some serious developments going on in other areas as well.DualmodeRamjet. This combines both Ramjet and scramjet technologies. A most like option for the so called RLV.
One presentation on this is as follows: Takes off from standard Runways with a booster rocket( akin to Lakshya).This booster burns out ataining supersonic speeds when the DMRJ kick starts. RLV cruises at high supersonic speeds gathering O2.When it reaches Target zone,ignites its scramjet and goes hypersonic, hits/drops the payload and takes a U turn then goes back to high supersonic using its Ramjet to reach its home base. This is fairly similar to ISRO concept, but the RLV either lands on a run-way or jumps into ocean.
Here we are clear that there are multiple developments on this hypersonic front. Its clear that DRDO RLV and Brahmos-II are diff.given that Brahmos-II is lighter than B-I and pack more punch (over 36-40 times more KE) will be settled down with a modest 300km range. But the Indian own hypersonic rocket will go beyond the 1000km barrier.
New materials have already been developed to extend the burn-out time from 20 sec to over a minute.And DMRJ will be ground tested soon with a little tinkering like going hypersonic-cooling down and then hypersonic again. This increases the range as well as the stability of the vehicle.
Infact we should be proud that we have 4 different projects going in parallel on this.(ISRO RLV,DMRJ,DRDO Hypersonic missile,Brahmos-II )
