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As the U.S. Air Force prepares to solicit industry for development of an air-launched hypersonic conventional strike weapon it is, for the first time, outlining its approach to operationalizing high-speed capability for a wide range of roles.
Despite more than 50 years of U.S. hypersonic development and several false dawns, the Air Force says the technology is only now reaching a point where it can actively plan a workable operational strategy for hypersonic strike, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The move has been prompted by advances in homegrown propulsion, materials and controls—as well as the growing threat of Chinese and Russian hypersonic capability. “We know hypersonic warfighting is here. We know we have got to get there, and we know we have to get some transition strategies to go forward,” says Col. Colin Tucker, military deputy for the U.S. Air Force deputy assistant secretary for science, technology and engineering. Building on the initial deployment of expendable weapons, he says, the eventual target is to expand on this capability for robust, repeatable operations using a reusable hypersonic platform.
Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Propulsion and Energy forum in Atlanta, Tucker said the key ingredient to the successful deployment of an operational hypersonic system is early user involvement: “It must have warfighter community buy-in to make sure it is actually something they will use. That means integration with the acquisition, science and technology and warfighter communities. We have to use modeling, simulations and war-gaming to flush out what these weapons will bring to us, not just from a technology standpoint but from a capability perspective. “At the end of the day, for me to put it on a ramp and give it to a person in a flight suit to go and use, it has got to be more airplane-like. So, logistically, it has got to be supportable, producible, affordable and operational, and not an experiment,” he says. To meet the requirements of high-tempo operations, he adds, developers will need to focus on improving the robustness of subsystems and propulsion. “For rocket-powered vehicles like the [Boeing-DARPA] XS-1, we have got to have rocket engines that we can use on a very short time cycle and repeatably. We can’t refurbish the engine between each flight; it is just not sustainable.” The winged XS-1 spaceplane, dubbed Phantom Express by Boeing, will be powered by the Aerojet Rocketdyne AR-22, a derivative of the rocket company’s RS-25 space shuttle main engine. Having beaten competition for the next phase from Northrop Grumman and Masten Space Systems, Boeing is building the XS-1 demonstrator, which will be completed and ground tested by the end of 2019. Over the same period Aerojet will also test the AR-22, ultimately targeting 10 firings over 10 consecutive days. Under the current DARPA plan, the XS-1 is expected to begin initial flight tests in 2020 at speeds up to Mach 5. Subsequent flights will fly at speeds up to Mach 10 as part of multistage missions to deliver payloads to low Earth orbit.
While the XS-1 will operate in the hypersonic regime, the Air Force is also focusing on a “flying wind tunnel,” to aid development of a series of air-breathing and rocket-powered expendable and reusable platforms that will operate in the near-space environment. “What do we need to do in an X-15 type of world that will help us take the next step?” says Tucker. “What types of things are there that we can bring in to push toward something more operational? We are not quite sure what this is yet, but that is something we are taking forward that we think is very important.” Tucker says an aircraft such as the air-breathing Mach 6 SR-72 “Son of Blackbird” ISR platform proposed by Lockheed Martin would be a good first step. He adds, “We are looking at a crawl-walk-run approach, and that requires us to be risk-tolerant. It does not have to be done in one fell swoop.” “So how are we going to get there?” Tucker asks. “We are going to need more ground and flight tests and new infrastructure investments.” He adds, “[We need] sustained commitments from the government and the Air Force that show this is important to us. The start-stop pattern of the past does not help build a robust workforce. I feel genuinely that we are at a point right now where we can honestly say there is going to be some continued work in this area to try and get to an operational system.” Tucker’s optimism is based on a dramatic upswing in the Air Force hypersonic research budget. Compared to 2012, when the Air Force spent just under $79 million on hypersonic science and technology programs, the service requested more than $292 million for the same areas in the 2018 presidential budget. Of this, $90 million was requested for prototyping.
While a number of classified hypersonic missile efforts are thought to be underway in the U.S., the only acknowledged committed government research developments are a series of technology demonstrator programs led by DARPA. These include two high-speed strike weapons: the Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) program and the Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon (HAWC). The TBG is a follow-on to the unsuccessful HTV-2 hypersonic cruise vehicle demonstrator and is a rocket-launched hypersonic weapon capable of flying more than 1,000 mi. in 10 min. The TBG, in development by Lockheed Martin, is attempting to repackage the high lift-to-drag aerodynamic and aerothermal design concepts of the global-range HTV-2 into a smaller, tactical-range weapon Raytheon Missile Systems and Lockheed Martin are meanwhile competing for the HAWC, a follow-on to the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) successful Boeing X-51A WaveRider hypersonic scramjet engine demonstrator.
Leveraging elements of these DARPA/AFRL efforts, the Air Force has meanwhile begun efforts to develop an air-launched Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon.
- Boeing,
- Lockheed Martin,
- Northrop Grumman,
- Raytheon Missile Systems and
- Orbital ATK
have all been listed as potential developers of the precision strike missile, which the service says will be fired at “high-value, time-critical fixed and relocatable surface targets.” A contract for development of the weapon—which will be conventionally armed, powered by solid rocket and guided by an integrated GPS/INS (inertial guidance system)—will be awarded in early 2018. Beyond missiles and XS-1, DARPA’s other major hypersonic program is the Advanced Full-Range Engine (AFRE), a ground demonstrator of a turbine-based combined-cycle engine that will enable an aircraft to operate at Mach 5+ from standard runways. Launched 18 months ago, AFRE is a “full-scale engine, and will validate [that] we can have an effective engine,” says DARPA Tactical Technology Office Director Brad Tousley. “We need the same sort of thing as the J58 was in the SR-71, and AFRE is the same sort of thing. If that is successful, we think it would open up the trade space for us to work together with the Air Force, the U.S. Navy and others on a really ‘no-kidding’ reusable hypersonic aircraft. “It is time for the nation to move forward and develop prototype weapon capability so the Air Force and others can assess through an analysis of alternatives what to do about it,” adds Tousley. “The nation needs to do an awful amount of work defending against this capability because the threats are evolving very rapidly.”
http://aviationweek.com/defense/us-air-force-plans-road-map-operational-hypersonics
Despite more than 50 years of U.S. hypersonic development and several false dawns, the Air Force says the technology is only now reaching a point where it can actively plan a workable operational strategy for hypersonic strike, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The move has been prompted by advances in homegrown propulsion, materials and controls—as well as the growing threat of Chinese and Russian hypersonic capability. “We know hypersonic warfighting is here. We know we have got to get there, and we know we have to get some transition strategies to go forward,” says Col. Colin Tucker, military deputy for the U.S. Air Force deputy assistant secretary for science, technology and engineering. Building on the initial deployment of expendable weapons, he says, the eventual target is to expand on this capability for robust, repeatable operations using a reusable hypersonic platform.
Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Propulsion and Energy forum in Atlanta, Tucker said the key ingredient to the successful deployment of an operational hypersonic system is early user involvement: “It must have warfighter community buy-in to make sure it is actually something they will use. That means integration with the acquisition, science and technology and warfighter communities. We have to use modeling, simulations and war-gaming to flush out what these weapons will bring to us, not just from a technology standpoint but from a capability perspective. “At the end of the day, for me to put it on a ramp and give it to a person in a flight suit to go and use, it has got to be more airplane-like. So, logistically, it has got to be supportable, producible, affordable and operational, and not an experiment,” he says. To meet the requirements of high-tempo operations, he adds, developers will need to focus on improving the robustness of subsystems and propulsion. “For rocket-powered vehicles like the [Boeing-DARPA] XS-1, we have got to have rocket engines that we can use on a very short time cycle and repeatably. We can’t refurbish the engine between each flight; it is just not sustainable.” The winged XS-1 spaceplane, dubbed Phantom Express by Boeing, will be powered by the Aerojet Rocketdyne AR-22, a derivative of the rocket company’s RS-25 space shuttle main engine. Having beaten competition for the next phase from Northrop Grumman and Masten Space Systems, Boeing is building the XS-1 demonstrator, which will be completed and ground tested by the end of 2019. Over the same period Aerojet will also test the AR-22, ultimately targeting 10 firings over 10 consecutive days. Under the current DARPA plan, the XS-1 is expected to begin initial flight tests in 2020 at speeds up to Mach 5. Subsequent flights will fly at speeds up to Mach 10 as part of multistage missions to deliver payloads to low Earth orbit.
While the XS-1 will operate in the hypersonic regime, the Air Force is also focusing on a “flying wind tunnel,” to aid development of a series of air-breathing and rocket-powered expendable and reusable platforms that will operate in the near-space environment. “What do we need to do in an X-15 type of world that will help us take the next step?” says Tucker. “What types of things are there that we can bring in to push toward something more operational? We are not quite sure what this is yet, but that is something we are taking forward that we think is very important.” Tucker says an aircraft such as the air-breathing Mach 6 SR-72 “Son of Blackbird” ISR platform proposed by Lockheed Martin would be a good first step. He adds, “We are looking at a crawl-walk-run approach, and that requires us to be risk-tolerant. It does not have to be done in one fell swoop.” “So how are we going to get there?” Tucker asks. “We are going to need more ground and flight tests and new infrastructure investments.” He adds, “[We need] sustained commitments from the government and the Air Force that show this is important to us. The start-stop pattern of the past does not help build a robust workforce. I feel genuinely that we are at a point right now where we can honestly say there is going to be some continued work in this area to try and get to an operational system.” Tucker’s optimism is based on a dramatic upswing in the Air Force hypersonic research budget. Compared to 2012, when the Air Force spent just under $79 million on hypersonic science and technology programs, the service requested more than $292 million for the same areas in the 2018 presidential budget. Of this, $90 million was requested for prototyping.
While a number of classified hypersonic missile efforts are thought to be underway in the U.S., the only acknowledged committed government research developments are a series of technology demonstrator programs led by DARPA. These include two high-speed strike weapons: the Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) program and the Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon (HAWC). The TBG is a follow-on to the unsuccessful HTV-2 hypersonic cruise vehicle demonstrator and is a rocket-launched hypersonic weapon capable of flying more than 1,000 mi. in 10 min. The TBG, in development by Lockheed Martin, is attempting to repackage the high lift-to-drag aerodynamic and aerothermal design concepts of the global-range HTV-2 into a smaller, tactical-range weapon Raytheon Missile Systems and Lockheed Martin are meanwhile competing for the HAWC, a follow-on to the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) successful Boeing X-51A WaveRider hypersonic scramjet engine demonstrator.
Leveraging elements of these DARPA/AFRL efforts, the Air Force has meanwhile begun efforts to develop an air-launched Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon.
- Boeing,
- Lockheed Martin,
- Northrop Grumman,
- Raytheon Missile Systems and
- Orbital ATK
have all been listed as potential developers of the precision strike missile, which the service says will be fired at “high-value, time-critical fixed and relocatable surface targets.” A contract for development of the weapon—which will be conventionally armed, powered by solid rocket and guided by an integrated GPS/INS (inertial guidance system)—will be awarded in early 2018. Beyond missiles and XS-1, DARPA’s other major hypersonic program is the Advanced Full-Range Engine (AFRE), a ground demonstrator of a turbine-based combined-cycle engine that will enable an aircraft to operate at Mach 5+ from standard runways. Launched 18 months ago, AFRE is a “full-scale engine, and will validate [that] we can have an effective engine,” says DARPA Tactical Technology Office Director Brad Tousley. “We need the same sort of thing as the J58 was in the SR-71, and AFRE is the same sort of thing. If that is successful, we think it would open up the trade space for us to work together with the Air Force, the U.S. Navy and others on a really ‘no-kidding’ reusable hypersonic aircraft. “It is time for the nation to move forward and develop prototype weapon capability so the Air Force and others can assess through an analysis of alternatives what to do about it,” adds Tousley. “The nation needs to do an awful amount of work defending against this capability because the threats are evolving very rapidly.”
http://aviationweek.com/defense/us-air-force-plans-road-map-operational-hypersonics
