STAR WARS: China beats US to testing 9,127mph HYPERSONIC missile carrier

[The SC]

THE United States has been beaten in a hypersonic arms race after China successfully tested a 'spaceship' that can carry weapons across the world 10 times faster than the speed of sound.


By Tom Rawle / Published 14th January 2014

GLIDER: The vehicles are designed to carry missiles and monitor military activity from space [IG]

The unmanned aircraft can therefore leave the Chinese capital Beijing and be hanging over Washington D.C in less than 45 minutes - raising worries in the White House.

With an advanced radar system that can target locations from the edge of space, this ultra-fast vehicle can manouvre itself anywhere around the globe.

The futuristic carrier, which can fly almost 20 times as fast as a jumbo jet, can hold ballistic missiles with hypersonic cruise missiles and smaller surveillance drones expected to be on board.

This latest design in foreign weapon intelligence comes as China refuses to take up arms talks with its economic rivals.

A Pentagon official confirmed a WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicle broke record speeds over China on January 9 but refused to give details.

Former US Air Force officer Mark Stokes believes the vehicles are likely to be used in a space race defence.

He told US newspaper Washington Free Beacon: "A boost glide missile theoretically would be intended to counter existing mid-course missile defenses."

Stokes believes that hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV) could reach Mach 12 speeds of up to 9,127 miles per hour which could break through any US missile defence.

MACH20: Some hypersonic fliers can get to speeds of up to 12,000mph [DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY]

“The beauty of the HGV is that it can perform hypersonic precision strikes while maintaining a relatively low altitude and flat trajectory”

Mark Stokes, former US Air Force officer
Rick Fisher, an analyst at the International Assessment and Strategy Center said: “The beauty of the HGV is that it can perform hypersonic precision strikes while maintaining a relatively low altitude and flat trajectory, making it far less vulnerable to missile defenses."

Fisher added: “They [the Chinese government] are actively seeking global military power to challenge the United States, and it is not yet in any mood to talk, or engage in arms control, about it,”

Tensions have increased in the past two years with China, the US and Russia striving for more bigger, better defence technology.

The US discovered last year that China were building the hypersonic weapons, which according to the Chinese "pose a threat".

But the Western superpower have been creating missile aircrafts of their own of similar speeds.

Developers in the US are in the process of perfecting the Lockheed HTV-2, that can also travel at speeds of up to Mach 20, or 13,000 miles per hour.

Russia have also taken to creating new potentially dangerous equipment.

Defence experts in Moscow are working on the latest model of the RS-26 Rubezh.

Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin said in June last year: “Neither current nor future American missile defense systems will be able to prevent that missile from hitting a target dead on.

"We are experiencing a revolution in military science."

STAR WARS: China beat US to testing 9,127mph HYPERSONIC missile carrier | Latest News | Latest Breaking News | Daily Star

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I can't wait until we upgrade the DF-21D carrier killer ballistic missile with an HGV warhead.

The HGV will massively increase the range, accuracy, maneuverability and survivability of the platform, making it nearly impossible to intercept. And it will be extremely accurate and maneuverable at the terminal stage, allowing it to seek out and strike moving targets in an unprecedented manner.

We won't even need to leave our own territorial waters to sink enemy warships halfway across the planet.

Hopefully we will eventually use submarines as a launch platform for our HGV, submarine-launched ballistic missiles are the perfect vehicle for it.

 

[The SC]

The strategic implications of China’s hypersonic missile test

The defence press is reporting that on 9 January, China conducted the first test of a new hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), launched atop of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The vehicle can reportedly glide and manoeuvre at speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 10—or up to 10 times the speed of sound. While the Pentagon detected and monitored the launch, it took China’s Ministry of Defense six days to confirm the flight of a ‘new ultra-high-speed missile delivery vehicle’. It’s worth examining the significance of this test. I’ll have a look at the strategic dimension, and Andrew Davies will take a closer look on the military-technological implications.
First, the test shows that China has made significant progress towards becoming a serious military ‘space power’. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) regards the ability to operate HGVs and other highly sophisticated space capabilities, such as scramjet-powered vehicles, as a precondition to establishing China as a major military power. Importantly, the HGV test wasn’t unexpected for China watchers, as Beijing has long made the military use of space a national priority. The PLA’s goal over the next 10–15 years is to merge air and space power and to integrate future hypersonic weapons into a complex system of surveillance and targeting sensors, including over-the-horizon (OTH) radar as well as near space and satellite platforms. Operating HGVs in conjunction with warheads is a significant milestone towards reaching this objective.
Moreover, the test is likely to further complicate US strategy for the Asia-Pacific. It demonstrates China’s latest advance in precision-strike arsenals which already includes systems such as the much discussed DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile. The PLA will probably use the HGV technology to enhance the range and sophistication of other medium- and long-range ballistic missiles—thereby posing an even bigger risk to US forward deployed troops and assets. And while the PLA could assign hypersonic strike systems to a primarily tactical role to be employed against targets in the region, the HGV could also be part of an emerging Chinese hypersonic long-range strike architecture akin to the American Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CGPS) system.
China’s HGV test and other investments in hypersonic weaponry thus pose critical questions about the future mix of offensive and defensive weapon systems in America’s Asia-Pacific deterrent posture. Because of their speed and manoeuvrability, hypersonic weapons are a real challenge for ballistic missile defences, particularly for those based on land- and sea-launched missile systems. While the US has repeatedly stated that its missile defence capabilities in Asia are only directed against a limited North Korean threat, allies such as Japan and South Korea certainly expect those systems to play a role as a deterrent against China. A successful Chinese hypersonic weapon would clearly undermine this potential unless the US manages to field a credible counter as part of its ballistic missile defence system. Otherwise, the US deterrent would need to rely overwhelmingly on offensive conventional and nuclear weapons, which could create a new dilemma for Sino-US crisis stability and deterrent credibility.
The HGV test is also likely to contribute to an emerging Asian ‘arms race’ related to hypersonic weapons. These systems are quickly becoming an important part of the developing of theatre and long-range conventional ‘strategic’ strike assets for other major powers in Asia. Apart from the US and China, Russia and India are developing hypersonic weaponry. The Russian government regards this capability as absolutely essential. In this context, an analysis of China’s military modernisation and its impact on Asian security must extend beyond the Sino-US dyad to include Russian and Indian responses. Moreover, while supersonic cruise missiles are already proliferating in Asia, such as Taiwan’s Mach 2 Hsiung Feng 3, more countries in the region could have access to hypersonic weapons in the future.
So it’s high time to start thinking about crisis stability in Asia under the potentially game changing conditions of hypersonic weaponry. For example, if the opposing parties have the capacity to attack targets anywhere in the region within hours, or even minutes, without much prior force movement, their motivation to strike first could be significantly increased. This dynamic raises several important questions: do conventional hypersonic weapons favour the attacker? How does effective ‘signalling’ work in these circumstances? At which point do hypersonic attacks become a ‘strategic’ threat to one or the other side so as to trigger an escalated response, potentially including the use of nuclear weapons? Further, there’s a question about the future balance between offensive and defensive capabilities. Because of their response and re-engagement times, missile based defence systems could be much less effective against ballistic and/or cruise missiles that are equipped with manoeuvrable HGV warheads.
Finally, from an Australian perspective, the question is how ADF force planning should prepare for an Asia-Pacific strategic environment in which hypersonic and supersonic ballistic and cruise missiles play a prominent role. For example, should Navy and Air Force start laying the groundwork for acquiring and operating such systems? And what are the strategic and operational implications for ADF regional and global deployments to theatres in which a potential adversary possesses such systems?
The strategic implications of China’s hypersonic missile test | The Strategist

 

[The SC]

China Secretly Conducts Second Flight Test Of New Ultra High-Speed Missile
Wu-14 hypersonic glide vehicle poses major strategic weapons threat

China recently conducted the second flight test of a new, ultra-high-speed missile that is part of what analysts say is Beijing’s global system of attack weapons capable of striking the United States with nuclear warheads.

The latest test of the new hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) known as Wu-14 took place Aug. 7 at a missile facility in western China, said U.S. government officials familiar with details of the test reported in internal channels.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeffrey Pool said when asked about the test: “We routinely monitor foreign defense activities, however we don’t comment on our intelligence or assessments of foreign weapons systems.”

He added that the Pentagon has encouraged China to adopt greater “transparency” for its defense programs “to avoid miscalculation.”

Pool confirmed the first test in January, but declined to provide a similar confirmation on the recent test. However, two other U.S. officials said the Aug. 7 test involved the Wu-14 HGV.

The first flight test of the Wu-14 took place Jan. 9 and flew at speeds of around Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound—around 7,680 miles per hour. Hypersonic speeds pose severe guidance and control challenges for weapons engineers and produce extreme stress to metal and components.

The Chinese hypersonic test is further evidence of what is viewed in intelligence circles as an emerging hypersonic arms race. In addition to China, the United States, Russia and India are building high-technology hypersonic strategic arms. The weapons are sought for their hard-to-counter features and ability to defeat strategic missile defenses.

Disclosure of the latest weapons test comes as Secretary of State John Kerry, in a speech last week, called for closer cooperation with China. Tensions between Washington and Beijing have increased over aggressive Chinese maritime claims in Asia.

“We are committed to avoiding the trap of strategic rivalry and intent on forging a relationship in which we broaden our cooperation on common interests and constructively manage our differences and disagreements,” Kerry said during a speech Aug. 13 in Hawaii.

In China, state-run press outlets made no mention of the Aug. 7 test, but Chinese Internet reports revealed a possible Wu-14 launch was carried out as the upper stage of a missile on Aug. 7 from the Jiuquan satellite launch facility located in the far western Gobi Desert.

Reports and photos posted online indicated that the booster rocket used in the test crash landed in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

The booster crash is consistent with a hypersonic test, analysts said. Hypersonic glide vehicles travel in near space and thus the rocket that launched it may not have left the atmosphere, thus preventing it from burning up as would have occurred if it had reentered the atmosphere.

Photos posted on Chinese Internet sites and later removed showed debris from a booster that had Chinese characters painted on pieces indicating the rocket belonged to the China Aerospace Corp.—China’s main missile manufacturer.

The pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Oriental Daily reported Aug. 11 that Chinese microbloggers identified the Inner Mongolia crash as a failed Wu-14 test, but the newspaper said the impact was most likely caused by debris from a falling rocket booster.

China military affairs analysts said the second test of the HGV relatively soon after the January test is a significant strategic threat and a sign China has placed a high priority on the new weapon.

“The decision to conduct a second Wu-14 test only a few months after its first test shows China’s commitment to fast-tracking this program,” said Lora Saalman, a specialist on China’s hypersonic development with the Carnegie Endowment.

“When compared with the yearly gaps in between its [anti-satellite] and [ballistic missile defense] tests in 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2014, the WU-14 accelerates China’s development timeline exponentially,” Saalman said in an email.


Rocket booster debris from Wu-14 test

Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the second test portends two near-term threats.

“First would be a potential for early deployment of a maneuverable HGV warhead for theater-range and then intercontinental-range missiles,” Fisher said.

“Secondly, accelerated HGV testing could potentially allow China to develop a second generation anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) warhead that is more maneuverable and more difficult to counter.”

Saalman said China has produced thousands of papers and writings on hypersonics and boost-glide technology that “further support the idea that this is a priority” program.

In a report published in April for the U.S. Pacific Command’s think tank, Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, Saalman stated the Wu-14 appears to be part of China’s efforts to build a counterpart to the U.S. Prompt Global Strike initiative.

Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is a U.S. military program to develop weapons—mainly missiles—that can strike targets at any location on earth within 30 minutes using conventional warheads. China fears the system will be used to knock out its nuclear missiles on the ground in the early stages of a conflict.

The U.S. PGS capability is being designed for use against terrorists or nuclear and other mass destruction weapons that are identified by intelligence agencies and must be attacked quickly before the targets flee or are moved.

Saalman said the Wu-14 represents “a potential leap in global reach, if mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile” and potentially “a conventional or nuclear form of Chinese prompt global strike.”

The Chinese regard the Wu-14 as a “sword” strike weapons that likely will be combined with missile defenses—a “shield.”

The first test in January took China’s “regional weapons advances and thrust them onto the global stage,” she stated.

“This [January] test serves as a sign of China moving towards longer range, stronger retaliatory and potentially preemptive capability,” Saalman said, adding that the capability “could propel China from what has historically been a more reactive posture to a more active one.”

Fisher said for the United States, the options for responding to the new strategic weapon are stark. The Pentagon should accelerate investments in both deterrent and defensive capabilities, he said.

“The U.S. Navy should have a theater-range, HGV-ASBM to arm its [attack submarines],” Fisher said. “The Navy also requires funding for faster development of energy weapons to defend against China’s looming HGV threat.”

Mark Stokes, a specialist on China’s strategic weapons, said the test signals Beijing’s priority for building hypersonic weapons.

“I don’t think there’s any debate that the PLA is investing in the development of hypersonic technology, including scramjet engines and at least one hypersonic glide vehicle,” Stokes said in an email.

Stokes said it is possible the recent test was carried out atop a medium-range or intermediate-range ballistic missile.

According to Stokes, many of China’s missile engineering R&D tests and operational live-fire tests are carried out from Jiuquan, in Gansu province, where missiles are labeled “SC” for the Shuangchengzi missile range, another name for the missile test base. Other tests are conducted at the Taiyuan launch facility near Wuzhai, in Shanxi province further east, where developmental systems are labeled “Wu,” Stokes said.

China’s Jiuquan launch facility took part in the January 2010 missile defense test involving a CSS-X-11 medium-range ballistic missile used as a target for the SC-19 missile defense interceptor.

Earlier this year, U.S. intelligence agencies assessed the Wu-14 appears linked to China’s strategic nuclear weapons systems.

Lee Fuell, an analyst with the Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center, told a congressional hearing that the strike vehicle is “basically a ballistic missile-launched system that gets the payload fast and high, pitches over, dives to hypersonic speed, and then basically just glides to the target.”

“At this point, we think that’s associated with their nuclear deterrent forces,” Fuell told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on January 30. Fuell added: “Of great concern would be if they were to apply the same technology and capability with a conventional warhead or even just without a warhead because of the kinetic energy that it has.”

The Pentagon, for its part, has conducted work on several hypersonic weapons platforms. They include the X-37B Space Plane, the Lockheed Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2, and the Air Force’s Force Application and Launch from Continental United States, known as FALCON. Boeing also has built an experimental hypersonic craft known as the X-51 WaveRider.

However, funding for U.S. hypersonic strike craft has been limited as a result of sharp Pentagon budget cuts under the Obama administration.

Russia’s military also has made developing hypersonic strike vehicles a priority. But Moscow is believed to be trailing both China and the United States in the capability.

This entry was posted in National Security and tagged Air force, China, Military, nuclear weapons.

China Secretly Conducts Second Flight Test Of New Ultra High-Speed Missile | Washington Free Beacon

 

[The SC]

The real military game-changer: Hypersonic weapons 101

Harry Kazianis, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the China Policy Institute (University of Nottingham) and Managing Editor of the Washington, DC-based international affairs publication The National Interest interviewed John Stillion, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).


Q: Please describe what exactly a hypersonic weapon is, for our readers.


A: NASA defines the hypersonic regime as speeds greater than Mach 5 but less than Mach 25. It further divides this speed regime into two parts. One is the 'high-hypersonic' speed range between Mach 10 and Mach 25. The other is the range between Mach 5 and Mach 10 referred to simply as the hypersonic speed range (this is about 5300 to 10,600 kmh). The latter is the speed regime where most of the recent discussion of hypersonic weapons has been focused.


Ballistic missiles with ranges between about 300 and 1000 km travel in this speed range, but they generally don't travel long distances through the atmosphere at these speeds. Usually when hypersonic weapons are discussed people are referring to machines that can sustain flight in the Mach 5 to 10 speed range for a significant distance and period of time measured in minutes. For perspective, the Concorde supersonic transport cruised at Mach 2.


Q: What nations have the strongest hypersonic weapons programs? How advanced is American technology in this regard?


A: Press reports indicate there are only three nations with hypersonic weapons programs: the US, Russia and China.


In November 2011 the US Army conducted a successful test of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) demonstrator. This is a hypersonic glide vehicle similar in concept to the reported Chinese system. A hypersonic glide vehicle couples the high speeds of ballistic missiles with the maneuverability of an aircraft. The goal of the AHW test was to collect data on hypersonic glide vehicle technologies to inform possible future designs. The test used a three-stage missile booster system to power the test vehicle to hypersonic speed and evaluated its performance on a flight over the Pacific Ocean.


A second US approach to hypersonic weapons made a similar advance on 1 May 2013 when the US successfully tested the Boeing X-51 hypersonic research vehicle.


It is powered by a supersonic combustion ramjet or 'scramjet' engine and flew about 306 km in three and a half minutes at just over Mach 5. This was the first successful test of a scramjet-powered vehicle. The scramjet is efficient at hypersonic speeds, but as the name implies, the air flowing through the engine is traveling at supersonic speed, so the fuel must be precisely measured, injected into the air flow and ignited with extreme speed. Work on what eventually became the X-51 began in the early 1990s.


These successful tests indicate the US is well along the path to solving many of the problems associated with sustained hypersonic flight. These include the high drag and temperatures generated by vehicles traveling at hypersonic speed and developing an efficient powerplant.


Q: There have been reports that America is considering building such weapons for deployment on submarines. How challenging would this be and is it practical?


A: The X-51 had to be boosted to high speed (Mach 4+) by a rocket before it could start its scramjet engine. So, any weapon employing a similar propulsion system would probably initially be launched like a missile. The US has been launching missiles from submarines for decades and is familiar with, and has overcome, the technical challenges likely to arise in that part of the development program. Alternatively, launching a missile with an AHW-derived weapon might be equally feasible.


Q: China's various hypersonic glide vehicle tests have garnered a lot of attention. How advanced might Beijing's hypersonic program be compared to the US?


A: Not much is really known publicly about the Chinese program. What has been reported indicates that their initial investments might be focused on building vehicles that can replace the re-entry vehicles usually carried by ballistic missiles. These 'hypersonic glide vehicles', as the name implies, are carried by ballistic missiles, but once they descend into the upper atmosphere, their shape gives them much greater range and maneuverability than 'normal' cone-shaped re-entry vehicles. So, based on press reports, the Chinese AHW programs might be characterised as working to improve the capabilities of ballistic missiles while the X-51 program is focused on making weapons that behave more like very fast cruise missiles.


Q: Many have stated Chinese hypersonic technology could be used as a new form of anti-ship weapon like the DF-21D. Would you say this is possible?


A: Again, based on press reports, the DF-21D seems to rely on a maneuverable cone-shaped re-entry vehicle. Replacing this with a hypersonic glide vehicle might give the existing weapon greater ability to maneuver to attack targets and avoid defences as well as greater range.


Q: How long would it take for such Chinese tests to move towards a weaponised system?


A: Our track record in predicting when new Chinese weapons will come on line is not very good. The DF-21D and J-20 stealth fighter both materialised more quickly than most outside observers thought they would. If the Chinese tests are as far along as they seem to be from press reports, it might be possible to see operational systems with this technology in the field within a decade.


Q: Can US missile-defence platforms such as AEGIS defend against such weapons? If not, what options would America have?


A: Defensive missiles have very limited time and a finite amount of energy available to position themselves to intercept an incoming offensive missile. Like most guided weapons they constantly compute and re-compute the point in space where they will intercept the incoming missile and fly toward that point. If the incoming missile is truly a ballistic missile, then its trajectory is essentially fixed and the interceptor will not need to maneuver much because the calculated intercept point will be quite stable. However, if the incoming missile can maneuver, the interceptor will need to maneuver as well. Given the high speeds and short timelines involved, hypersonic glide vehicles have the potential to make defensive missiles less effective than they might be against non-maneuvering targets.


Options for bolstering defences include the electromagnetic railgun and directed-energy technologies currently under development. Other possible countermeasures include using jammers or other electronic countermeasure techniques to deny targeting data to the attacker or to confuse the hypersonic glide vehicle's own sensors as it attempts to hit its target. Disrupting communication links between sensing, command-and-control, and missile units is another possible means of decreasing the effectiveness of such weapons. Over the long run, developing long-range, survivable strike systems that would allow our ships to operate beyond the effective reach of weapons like the DF-21D may be the most robust defensive approach.



The real military game-changer: Hypersonic weapons 101

 

[F-22Raptor]

China did NOT beat the US to hypersonic weapons. The US Army successfully tested their Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) glide vehicle in November 2011. The missile launched from Hawaii and traveled 2,300 miles(3,700km) to Kwajalein Atoll in less than 30 minutes.

The US also successfully tested the first air breathing hypersonic scramjet in May 2013, titled the X-51 Waverider.

 

[The SC]

U.S. Navy Sees Chinese HGV As Part Of Wider Threat
At the 2014 annual Surface Navy Association Symposium Jan. 15, Locklear said, “a lot of nations are testing hypersonics. That particular test doesn't bother me. This is not about China. This system is going to proliferate. In the 21st century, somebody in the world is going to have that capability. Whether we become the best buddies in the world with China, we're going to face these challenges with somebody, somewhere in the world. It is what it is.”

...Higher-performance RVs and HGVs, such as the WU-14, tend to have different features, partly because the thermal environment is tougher: Not only are longer-range weapons faster, but the longer the glide segment, the greater the cumulative thermal load. The 1970s McDonnell Douglas AMaRV used a finless, biconic shape steered by trailing-edge flaps. The AMaRV concept was revived in mid-2000s Air Force studies of a Common Aero Vehicle, an intercontinental conventional strike weapon.

In 2011, the U.S. Army demonstrated a prototype of an Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, a fin-controlled vehicle designed for a fully endo-atmospheric trajectory. This was made possible with the help of high-temperature ceramic composite materials developed by Sandia National Laboratory.

Any ballistic missile could carry the HGV. Chinese ICBMs could use it to help ensure deterrence in the face of U.S. defenses. But shorter-range uses seem more likely, at least at first. “I suspect that the HGV is intended more for anti-ship or other tactical purposes than as a strategic bombardment system against American [or other countries'] cities,” says analyst Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation. “An HGV might help resolve difficulties of hitting maneuvering targets with a ballistic missile.”

A ground-bombardment missile is a likely first application, to avoid the complications of combining course correction with the new reentry technology, says Fisher. Chinese sources mention two possible early HGV weapon applications, he says. One is a rumored “DF-26,” apparently a DF-21 medium-range ballistic missile fitted with a maneuverable HGV warhead. “With an HGV, such a missile may be extended from 2,000 kilometers to over 3,000 kilometers in range,” Fisher says. “A second application would be to take the early DF-31 [ICBM] introduced in 1999 and extend this 8,000-kilometer-range missile to 12,000 kilometers,” he says.

Fisher sees an advantage in taking cheap, proven missiles and giving them greater reach with HGV warheads. The testing of the WU-14, and the prospective difficulty of intercepting it with missiles, greatly raises the urgency of developing U.S. directed-energy defenses, he adds.

Yet that depends on how soon the HGV is operational. At a conference this month organized by the Center for a New America Security, former Japanese navy commander Vice Adm. Yoji Koda suggested that in the future Chinese nuclear submarines would constitute the main threat in the waters near China, with ASBMs “intercepting incoming U.S. forces further out.” However, in his estimation, it could take 10-15 years before the ASBM becomes a major threat. An anti-ship HGV would be even more distant.

Hitting a ship with either a maneuvering or HGV warhead is not simple. The target has to be detected, identified, precisely located and tracked. Data must be passed from sensors to a command system, and perhaps to the missile, for mid-course correction. The missile's guidance system must be able to find the target within a zone of uncertainty that depends on how far the target can move in the time between location and intercept. The guidance system must resist jamming and discriminate between types of ships, such as carriers and destroyers. The fuse, if there is one, must not be disrupted.

U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Johnathan Greenert referred to that critical “chain of events” in May, and said the Navy was developing, or had developed, systems, means and procedures for disrupting or countering the DF-21D. As it did with the threat of Soviet missile-carrying Tu-22M aircraft in the Cold War, the Navy seeks to break early links in the chain, such as detection and identification, with maneuver and control of emissions—but Greenert himself cast doubt on that approach at the surface navy conference. Noting that the Navy needs a new emphasis on “electromagnetic maneuver warfare,” Greenert says, “we have to learn what our signature is when we use radar, communications and Wi-Fi. We think that we turn everything off and everything is silent. But we have done tests and we are not silent.”

Space-based radar, a leading candidate for searching large oceanic areas, has become less costly and more efficient, and there are hints of Chinese-Russian collaboration in this area. NPO Mashinostroyeniya launched its first Kondor-E synthetic aperture radar satellite on June 27 last year, to fill an order for an undisclosed customer. China's development of unmanned air systems with reduced radar cross sections, such as the joined-wing Soar Dragon, could also point to maritime surveillance uses.

At a briefing shortly before the surface navy conference, Jim Sheridan, Lockheed director of Aegis programs, was asked specifically about whether the Navy had approached the company about Aegis handling the DF-21D, and replied, “There's been some discussion. I'm not going into that area.”

In the event of a hit, analysts have often looked at the potential for a hypersonic missile to cause damage with kinetic energy alone. Andrew Davies of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute is skeptical, calculating that the energy of an inert object of a 500 kg RV at an impact velocity of Mach 6 would be comparable to the kinetic and explosive energy of a subsonic Boeing AGM-84 Harpoon, and only a quarter of Russia's supersonic Tactical Missiles Corp./Raduga P-270 Moskit. Raduga's Cold War “carrier-killer,” the Kh-22, is a 12,800-lb. weapon that hits at a speed above Mach 4 with a 2,200-lb.-class, shaped-charge warhead. However, classified studies carried out by McDonnell Douglas in the 1980s also showed that much smaller warheads—for instance, dispenser weapons with long-rod penetrators—would cause enough damage to a warship to put it out of commission, pending major repairs.

U.S. Navy Sees Chinese HGV As Part Of Wider Threat | AWIN content from Aviation Week

 

[The SC]

China did NOT beat the US to hypersonic weapons. The US Army successfully tested their Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) glide vehicle in November 2011. The missile launched from Hawaii and traveled 2,300 miles(3,700km) to Kwajalein Atoll in less than 30 minutes.

The US also successfully tested the first air breathing hypersonic scramjet in May 2013, titled the X-51 Waverider.

"China's achievement must be placed in perspective. The U.S. Air Force tested a Mach 15 HGV, the McDonnell Boost Glide Research Vehicle, four times in 1966-68, with two successful flights. A follow-on that represented an operational design, the McDonnell Douglas Advanced Maneuvering Reentry Vehicle (AMaRV), was tested in 1979-80. The tests did not lead to an in-service weapon because of a 1980s focus on basing modes, arms control and missile defense."

U.S. Navy Sees Chinese HGV As Part Of Wider Threat | AWIN content from Aviation Wee

 

[zain8500]

China can get more progress from USA.

 

[F-22Raptor]

"China's achievement must be placed in perspective. The U.S. Air Force tested a Mach 15 HGV, the McDonnell Boost Glide Research Vehicle, four times in 1966-68, with two successful flights. A follow-on that represented an operational design, the McDonnell Douglas Advanced Maneuvering Reentry Vehicle (AMaRV), was tested in 1979-80. The tests did not lead to an in-service weapon because of a 1980s focus on basing modes, arms control and missile defense."

U.S. Navy Sees Chinese HGV As Part Of Wider Threat | AWIN content from Aviation Wee

My point was that the title is misleading. The US has been researching hypersonics for decades, and has conducted multiple successful tests.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

My point was that the title is misleading. The US has been researching hypersonics for decades, and has conducted multiple successful tests.

Blame the British media for that. They love sensational headlines.

One thing is clear though:

“When compared with the yearly gaps in between its [anti-satellite] and [ballistic missile defense] tests in 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2014, the WU-14 accelerates China’s development timeline exponentially,” Saalman said in an email.

The gap between major tests is becoming less and less over time, our development in this field is moving at an exponential pace.

 

[The SC]

Speed is the new stealth
Hypersonic weapons: Building vehicles that fly at five times the speed of sound is amazingly hard, but researchers are trying
Jun 1st 2013 | From the print edition Last year a DARPA statement noted that America is gradually losing the “strategic advantage” that its stealth warplanes have long provided, as other countries’ stealth and counter-stealth capabilities continue to improve. Instead, DARPA suggested, America will need “the new stealth” of hypersonic vehicles. Similarly, Russia’s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, remarked last year that the design of hypersonic missiles had become a priority for the country. Getting anything to work at all under hypersonic conditions is extraordinarily difficult—but the effort

ON AUGUST 20th 1998 Bill Clinton ordered American warships in the Arabian Sea to fire a volley of more than 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at suspected terrorist training camps near the town of Khost in eastern Afghanistan. The missiles, flying north at about 880kph (550mph), took two hours to reach their target. Several people were killed, but the main target of the attack, Osama bin Laden, left the area shortly before the missiles struck. American spies located the al-Qaeda leader on two other occasions as he moved around Afghanistan in September 2000. But the United States had no weapons able to reach him fast enough.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, American officials decided that they needed to obtain a “prompt global strike” capability, able to deliver conventional explosives anywhere on Earth within an hour or two. One way to do this would be to take existing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and replace the nuclear warheads with standard explosives. The hitch is that ballistic missiles are usually armed with nuclear warheads. A launch could therefore be misconstrued as the start of a nuclear strike, says Arun Prakash, a former Chief of the Naval Staff, the top job in India’s navy.

Moreover, ICBMs carrying conventional explosives towards targets in Asia or the Middle East would at first be indistinguishable from those aimed at China or Russia, according to a paper issued by the Congressional Research Service, an American government-research body. This uncertainty might provoke a full-scale nuclear counterattack. In the years after 2001 funding for non-nuclear ballistic missiles was repeatedly cut by Congress, until military planners eventually gave up on the idea. Instead, they have now pinned their hopes on an alternative approach: superfast or “hypersonic” unmanned vehicles that can strike quickly by flying through the atmosphere, and cannot be mistaken for a nuclear missile.

These hypersonic vehicles are not rockets, as ICBMs are, but work in a fundamentally different way. Rockets carry their own fuel, which includes the oxygen needed for combustion in airless space. This fuel is heavy, making rockets practical only for short, vertical flights into space. So engineers are trying to develop lightweight, “air breathing” hypersonic vehicles that can travel at rocket-like speeds while taking oxygen from the atmosphere, as a jet engine does, rather than having to carry it in the form of fuel oxidants.

The term hypersonic technically refers to speeds faster than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5, equivalent to around 6,200kph at sea level and 5,300kph at high altitudes (where the colder, thinner air means the speed of sound is lower). Being able to sustain flight in the atmosphere at such speeds would have many benefits. Hypersonic vehicles would not be subject to existing treaties on ballistic-missile arsenals, for one thing. It is easier to manoeuvre in air than it is in space, making it more feasible to dodge interceptors or change trajectory if a target moves. And by cutting the cost of flying into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the technology could also help reduce the expense of military and civilian access to space.

All this, however, requires a totally different design from the turbofan and turbojet engines that power airliners and fighter jets, few of which can operate beyond speeds of about Mach 2. At higher speeds the jet engines’ assemblies of spinning blades can no longer slow incoming air to the subsonic velocities needed for combustion. Faster propulsion relies instead on engines without moving parts. One type, called a ramjet, slows incoming air to subsonic speeds using a carefully shaped inlet to compress and thereby slow the airstream. Ramjets power France’s new, nuclear-tipped ASMPA missiles. Carried by Rafale and Mirage fighter jets, they are thought to be able to fly for about 500km at Mach 3, or around 3,700kph.

It’s not rocket science

But reaching hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 and above with an air-breathing engine means getting combustion to happen in a stream of supersonic air. Engines that do this are called supersonic-combustion ramjets, or scramjets. They also use a specially shaped inlet to slow the flow of incoming air, but it does not slow down enough to become subsonic. This leaves engineers with a big problem: injecting and igniting fuel in a supersonic airstream is like “lighting a match in a hurricane and keeping it lit,” says Russell Cummings, a hypersonic-propulsion expert at California Polytechnic State University.

One way to do it is to use fuel injectors that protrude, at an angle, into the supersonic airstream. They generate small shock waves that mix oxygen with fuel as soon as it is injected. This mixture can be ignited using the energy of bigger shock waves entering the combustion chamber. Another approach is being developed at the Australian Defence Force Academy. In a process known as “cascade ionisation”, laser blasts lasting just a few nanoseconds rip electrons off passing molecules, creating pockets of hot plasma in the combustion chamber that serve as sparks.

Scramjet fuel must also be kept away from the wall of the combustion chamber. Otherwise, it might “pre-ignite” before mixing properly, blowing up the vehicle, says Clinton Groth, an engineer at the University of Toronto who is currently doing research at Cambridge University in England (and who has consulted for Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce, two engine-makers). To complicate matters further, scramjets move too fast for their internal temperature and air pressure to be controlled mechanically by adjusting the air intake. Instead, as scramjets accelerate, they must ascend into thinner air at a precise rate to prevent rising heat and pressure from quickening the fuel burn and blowing up the combustion chamber.

In other words, igniting a scramjet is difficult, and keeping it going without exploding is harder still. Moreover scramjets, like ramjets, cannot begin flight on their own power. Because they need to be moving quickly to compress air for combustion, scramjets must first be accelerated by piggybacking on a jet plane or rocket. There are, in short, formidable obstacles to the construction of a scramjet vehicle. Even though the idea has been around since the 1950s, it was not until the 1990s that a scramjet was successfully flight-tested by Russian researchers, working in conjunction with French and American scientists—and some experts doubt that those tests achieved fully supersonic combustion.

HyShot goes supersonic down under

The next step forward came in July 2002, when a British-designed scramjet vehicle was successfully flown in Australia by researchers at the University of Queensland. The HyShot scramjet flew at Mach 7.6 for six seconds. But this was not controlled flight of a scramjet vehicle: instead the HyShot was launched on a rocket into space, and its engine was then ignited as it fell, nose pointing downwards, at hypersonic speed back towards the ground.

More recently America’s space agency, NASA, has made progress with two experimental scramjet vehicles, both of which are dropped from a carrier plane and then accelerated using a rocket booster. The unmanned, hydrogen-fuelled X-43A scramjet accelerated to a record Mach 9.68 in November 2004. This was the first fully controlled flight of a scramjet-powered vehicle, though it lasted only ten seconds.

NASA is now concentrating on another test vehicle, the X-51A Waverider. In its first test, carried out in May 2010, the X-51A reached Mach 5, but not a hoped-for Mach 6, during a flight lasting roughly 200 seconds. Subsequent tests in June 2011 and August 2012 both failed. In a test flight on May 1st 2013, however, the X-51A maintained a speed of Mach 5.1 for four minutes, in the longest scramjet flight on record.

The unsheltering sky

In 2010 the head of America’s Pacific Command, Admiral Robert Willard, said that a Chinese programme to convert a nuclear ballistic missile into an aircraft-carrier killer, by packing it with conventional explosives, had reached “initial operational capability”. The DF-21D, as it is called, is designed to descend from space at hypersonic speed and strike ships in the Western Pacific. Even though the accuracy of the DF-21D’s guidance system is unknown, the missile is already altering the balance of power within its range, says Eric McVadon, a consultant on East Asian security and a former US Navy rear-admiral.

“America is slowly losing the strategic advantage that its stealth warplanes have long provided.”
Having ruled out such systems due to the “nuclear ambiguity” a launch would cause, and with powered hypersonic vehicles descended from the X-51A still years away, America has begun testing yet another approach. As part of an effort called Project Falcon, the US Air Force and DARPA, the research arm of America’s armed forces, have developed hypersonic “boost-glide” vehicles that piggyback on a modified ICBM and achieve hypersonic speeds simply by falling from a high altitude, rather than using a scramjet.

The “hypersonic cruise vehicle” (pictured on previous page), is carried on an ICBM into the lower reaches of space where it separates, and, rather than following an arching ballistic trajectory, glides back to Earth at more than 20,000kph. The first vehicle, tested in April 2010, successfully separated from its ICBM, but about nine minutes later contact was lost. “They were getting good data and then the skin peeled off and it went boom,” says Brian Weeden, a former air-force captain and nuclear-missile launch officer stationed in Montana. A test in 2011 also failed.

In spite of such setbacks, research into hypersonic weapons will continue. Building a vehicle capable of gliding at Mach 16 is difficult, but not impossible. America’s space shuttle used to re-enter the atmosphere at Mach 25, so fast that friction heated air molecules into a layer of plasma around the craft that radio signals could not penetrate. New “ceramic matrix composites” show great heat-shielding promise, says Sankar Sambasivan, the boss of Applied Thin Films, a company in Illinois that makes parts for military aircraft.

Testing equipment is also improving. Heat and pressure sensors, and even video cameras, can be embedded in vehicles to gather data as they fly, providing “a level of detail and fidelity that we’ve never had before,” says Ken Anderson, head of hypersonic air vehicles at Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation. Better wind tunnels help, too. The one at Belgium’s Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics can generate short blasts of air at Mach 14. This is done by cooling the test chamber, reducing the speed of sound and thereby increasing the Mach number of air forced in with a piston.

Hypersonic missiles: Speed is the new stealth | The Economist

 

[The SC]

My point was that the title is misleading. The US has been researching hypersonics for decades, and has conducted multiple successful tests.

Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 crashes on second test flight
August 11, 2011
On Thursday, DARPA's unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 (HTV-2) was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard an Air Force Minotaur IV rocket, which inserted the aircraft into the desired trajectory. After separation from the rocket, the vehicle transitioned to Mach 20 (approximately 13,000 mph/21,000 km/h) aerodynamic flight but a little after nine minutes of monitored flight the signal from the vehicle was lost with initial indications that the second test flight has ended in the same way as the first - with a crash into the Pacific Ocean.

A technology demonstrator and data-gathering platform, the ultimate goal of the HTV-2 aircraft is the capability to fly anywhere in the world in under 60 minutes by gliding through the Earth's atmosphere at incredibly high speeds, which cause the aircraft to experience temperatures in excess of 3,500°F (1,927°C). The aircraft's maiden flight in April 2010 followed a similar story to the latest flight with the vehicle providing data for a period of nine minutes before its signal was lost. This caused the vehicle to engage its onboard safety system, which executed a "controlled descent" into the Pacific Ocean.


"We gained valuable data from the first flight, made some adjustments based on the findings of an engineering review board to improve this second flight, and now we're ready to put all of that to the test," said Dave Neyland, director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, prior to the second test flight.
In the period between the two test flights, engineers adjusted the vehicle's center of gravity, decreased the angle of attack flown, and made the decision to use an onboard reaction control system to augment the vehicle flaps in an attempt to maintain stability during flight operations. Sophisticated simulations and extensive wind tunnel tests were also carried out but the team admits these ground tests "have not yielded the necessary knowledge" for the vehicle to sustain hypersonic atmospheric flight.

"Here's what we know," said Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, DARPA HTV-2 program manager and PhD in aerospace engineering. "We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It's vexing; I'm confident there is a solution. We have to find it."

Over the coming weeks the data collected from the second test flight will be analyzed by an independent Engineering Review Board. No announcement has been made regarding a third test flight.

"In the April 2010 test, we obtained four times the amount of data previously available at these speeds. Today more than 20 air, land, sea and space data collection systems were operational. We'll learn. We'll try again. That's what it takes," said DARPA Director Regina Dugan.
Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 crashes on second test flight

Does this mean that China is more advanced in HGV technology?
Yes in this case and no (maybe yes too) in the case of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) of United States of America that flies at mach 5 and higher (but how higher?)

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Does this mean that China is more advanced in HGV technology?

Maybe America is deliberately putting out misinformation, to give that impression. Who knows.

 

[F-22Raptor]

Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 crashes on second test flight
August 11, 2011
On Thursday, DARPA's unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 (HTV-2) was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard an Air Force Minotaur IV rocket, which inserted the aircraft into the desired trajectory. After separation from the rocket, the vehicle transitioned to Mach 20 (approximately 13,000 mph/21,000 km/h) aerodynamic flight but a little after nine minutes of monitored flight the signal from the vehicle was lost with initial indications that the second test flight has ended in the same way as the first - with a crash into the Pacific Ocean.

A technology demonstrator and data-gathering platform, the ultimate goal of the HTV-2 aircraft is the capability to fly anywhere in the world in under 60 minutes by gliding through the Earth's atmosphere at incredibly high speeds, which cause the aircraft to experience temperatures in excess of 3,500°F (1,927°C). The aircraft's maiden flight in April 2010 followed a similar story to the latest flight with the vehicle providing data for a period of nine minutes before its signal was lost. This caused the vehicle to engage its onboard safety system, which executed a "controlled descent" into the Pacific Ocean.



"We gained valuable data from the first flight, made some adjustments based on the findings of an engineering review board to improve this second flight, and now we're ready to put all of that to the test," said Dave Neyland, director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, prior to the second test flight.

In the period between the two test flights, engineers adjusted the vehicle's center of gravity, decreased the angle of attack flown, and made the decision to use an onboard reaction control system to augment the vehicle flaps in an attempt to maintain stability during flight operations. Sophisticated simulations and extensive wind tunnel tests were also carried out but the team admits these ground tests "have not yielded the necessary knowledge" for the vehicle to sustain hypersonic atmospheric flight.

"Here's what we know," said Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, DARPA HTV-2 program manager and PhD in aerospace engineering. "We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It's vexing; I'm confident there is a solution. We have to find it."

Over the coming weeks the data collected from the second test flight will be analyzed by an independent Engineering Review Board. No announcement has been made regarding a third test flight.

"In the April 2010 test, we obtained four times the amount of data previously available at these speeds. Today more than 20 air, land, sea and space data collection systems were operational. We'll learn. We'll try again. That's what it takes," said DARPA Director Regina Dugan.
Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 crashes on second test flight

Does this mean that China is more advanced in HGV technology?

Not at all, the US has had multiple hypersonic programs, some succeed more than others. Also, how do we know this second Chinese test flight was successful? Unless I overlooked something, that wasn't confirmed.