From this afternoon’s Military.com headlines…
Known by code names such as Falcon, High Fire and Blackswift, the experiments and tests are being kept closely guarded as the Air Force looks toward a future generation of air power and weaponry midway into the 21st century — or sooner.
One possibility is an ultra-fast long-range bomber that the Air Force wants to field within three decades. Air Force officials hope to deploy a new interim bomber by 2018, followed by a more advanced, and possibly unmanned, bomber in 2035 that could incorporate many of the concepts emerging from current research.
Dr. Mark Lewis, the chief scientist for the Air Force, told McClatchy that a hypersonic cruise missile may be the first operational product to emerge from the research. Government teams, working with private contractors, also hope to develop long-range hypersonic aircraft that would take off from conventional runways, travel more than 10,000 miles in two hours and land on runways.
“We know there are other countries that are working on this technology,” Lewis said. “My goal is to make sure that the United States is the first country that ever brings this technology to the fight.“
Military analyst Loren Thompson, an executive at the Lexington Institute, a defense policy organization in Arlington, said the Air Force “has great interest in long-range hypersonic vehicles that can do two things — collect intelligence and target time-sensitive assets.“
Thompson defined “time-sensitive assets” as “something that if you don’t hit right now it will be gone if you come back later.” He cited, as one example, a ballistic missile being prepared for launch against the United States.
The development of hypersonic technology has taken on new urgency after China destroyed one of its satellites 530 miles above Earth in a January 2007 test. The test raised fears within the U.S. government that a foreign power is capable of destroying military satellites in low Earth orbit.
Read more on this story over at Military.com.
– Christian
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
what I would give to see what the Airforce’s bomber would look like in 3 decades….
it will likely be scramjet. But I’m pretty dissapointed that there is ZERO news on PDE’s…..it seems that that prmoising tech went straight into the black.
I believe the REAL idea driving the quest for hypersonic vehicles comes from nearly a century of
This seems like nothing new. I remember hearing stories about the Aurora back when I was a tyke on a trike. Granted , that was a supposedly a spy plane but I’d guess that whatever development went into that would also be used for a super sonic bomber as well.
so this is what they were testing in texas a few weeks ago?
Expand this, develop this.
Use the B2 as the Main SC Bomber.
Museumize the B52.
Upgrade the B2 more.
Change B2 Prod regs for more B2s.
Fund this project.
More So CA jobs.
The civilian sideproject is a commercial HST
IE 707 became the KC135 for the USAF SAC in the Cold War 1.
Same for the HST.
Fund this.
Orlose to Chinese ICBMs hitting the US.
s-300 SAMs from Russia do how much faster than mach 4? While 10,000 miles in 2 hours is 5000mph and about mach 7? I think survivability could be achieved by going almost 2 times faster than your biggest threat. Add on the kinetic energy of a bomb released, some day it could be possible, at near that speed.
Why bother inventing a hypersonic bomber if you have hypersonic cruise missiles?
Planet Earth is not a terribly big place and we have allies who can host small cruise missile batteries not far from any place we care about, because mostly we care about places because we have allies there.
Designing a hypersonic bomber has to be a hundreds of billions of dollar R&D cost made all the more expensive because it is manned, on top of the cost of developing a hypersonic cruise missile.
Also, we already have superfast ballistic missiles for which none of our potential adversaries has any meaningful defenses.
“We know there are other countries that are working on this technology,” Lewis said.
Cultivating fear again are we?
MAC,
You might fall over when I say this, but I agree with you. The Air Force has way too many priorities right now to go spending billions of dollars in R & D to possibly bring this thing to fruition.
How about a slow high capacity bomber, relatively cheap that will replace the B-52. How about replacing our aging tankers. And how about getting more F-22s in the air.
The Air Force is crumbling due to age and we want to spend more money on a more expensive bomber.
And don’t we have UAVs for time sensitive targeting? I think those have worked out quite well in Pakistan recently.
Also, by the time you scramble one of these, send them across the globe, and drop ordinance you will probably miss the time sensitive window of opportunity. That is just a guess on my part unless we want these things on alert like the nuke bombers of the Cold War.
DC2
“We know there are other countries that are working on this technology,” Lewis said.
“Cultivating fear again are we?”
Unfortunately it seems fear is the only thing that gets Congress to put money into new research and projects. That and having companies in their states that will make money….
Even thought the Air force is crumbing from age, we are still a couple generations ahead of the competition (I know this is arguable due to missile technology) and having long range strike abilities is a key factor in any large scale combat. (Hitler did not have bombers with range enough to get to the Russian Factories. You know, the ones that made all those T-34′s….)
As for hyper-cruise missiles, you can only fire them once, they cannot refuel in flight like a bomber for long range flexibility, and keeping them in foreign countries is always a problem (see example Turkey in the Iraq conflict).
Not that I am against Hyper-cruise missiles, I just see them in a smaller role, mainly on ships (mobile platforms).
Dennis,
It does not matter how capable they are if they are falling from the sky due to metal fatigue.
And we do have bombers currently that will reach any corner of the Earth without being detected in any way shape or form by the enemy.
DC2
DC2 – not surprised at all ;-)
DA: ‘Too expensive’ doesn’t come from being newer, it comes from all the new technology that has to be created just to deliver a smaller payload flying in a more hostile flight regime than you could otherwise deliver more effectively by flying slower.
‘Hyper’ is comletely different than ‘super’ and
we’ve been flying supersonic for 50+ years and hypersonic cruise not at all. Subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic flows are COMPLETELY different. Supersonic was hard at first because we had to learn to get to ‘sonic’ using subsonic compressible flow knowledge and past the transonic drag rise. When we got to sonic and supersonic we had to learn how to exploit the non-compressible airflow. the reason it is called Hypersonic and not ‘super-duper’ sonic is that once again the relevant physics change: plasma flow is now the phenonemon that must be tamed. (All the while building a plane that will somewhat work at all the speeds required to get you there.) Weapons separation, materials, propulsion, et al at Hypersonic speeds is a whole new ball game. See http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11743&page=R1 and you will see that hypersonic aircraft are not that close at hand and he technology is not that mature.
I know I’ve referenced this NAS report before and apologies to all if it gets tiresome, but there are very few public summaries and studies (as in ‘this is about it’)that can be referenced in an open forum.
Minor asides:
1. I think Osama is probably ‘no more’ and if he isn’t — he isn’t particularly a problem now if we can’t tell either way.
2. Loitering nearby is the ONLY way to get something on target within a small enough window to be called time-critical. If I can find the reference (my library is torn up at the moment), later I’ll post an exect ‘minutes’ timeframe that is a good standard.
DA,
If you are talking about using ballistic missiles for prompt strike (15 to 30 minute response times) then you are on some seriously good stuff. Are you trying to start nuclear war? What happens if one of those targets happens to be in one of the ‘Stans near Russia? You think they are going to trust us that whatever we are launching is not nuclear tipped?
And separating a MIRV while in space is completely different from opening up a bomb door in the atmosphere at Mach 7.
But again, you are still talking about a minimum of two hours response to any credible intelligence. We can do that right now in any hotspot in the world. Horn of Africa (Marines, Navy, and SpecOps already there). Mille east (I think we got that pretty well covered). Afghanistan/Pakistan (same there).
You want to focus money on something useful? How about a stealthy UAV for loitering over areas where we don’t want people to know (say Syria). And the guy the Isrealis just blew up didn’t die from a bomb dropped from the sky.
So perhaps we could spend money on the CIA/NSA covert operations and stealthy UAVs and still have money left over.
We got rid of the SR-71 because they were too expensive to maintain. Yet we are going to spend this amount of money on a plane that I guarantee will be as expensive to maintain as the space shuttle. Rocket fuel isn’t cheap either.
And THE highest priority the Air Force should have right now is replacing it’s aging fleet of aircraft. We can argue F-22/F-35/F-16E/F-15 all we want, but they need to be recapitalized ASAP.
DC2
DA,
Once again, we are talking about a blog regarding hypersonic aircraft. That was my reference to M7 bomb door opening.
Just an FYI (since I don’t know what I am talking about), it is very difficult to get any information to a submerged ballistic missile sub. In fact, they come to depth a certain times of the day to get information. Otherwise they are in depths that prevent them from being detected.
Another FYI, both the Air Force and Navy have both studied this option.
MIRVs also are spec’d to hit an area in the hundreds of feet and not anything more precise.
I gotta be honest with you DA, when MAC agrees with me then the planets have aligned and there is no refuting us. Sorry.
DC2
Hey there Mr. Know It All,
ELF was terminated in 1998 and wasn’t really used that much anyways. VLF was used during the Cold War to transmit signals to SSBNs. This was done using TACAMO aircraft constantly flying over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Don’t talk to a sailor about sailing and I won’t talk to a supposed soldier about listening to their IPod while outside the wire.
You are correct on ballistic missile accuracy, I will give you that.
But we will never used ballistic missiles for conventional warheads, sorry.
I understand hypersonic aircraft are far different from conventional aircraft. That is why I referenced the space shuttle as it is the only hypersonic aircraft we currently have. And to drop a bomb, something needs to open up to drop it. Once that happens the aircraft will disentigrate.
Just an FYI, MAC is a very well respected and a very competent blogger on this site. If both of us agree on something I feel very confident that it is correct.
You make good points sometimes but don’t be an arrogant ass-jack. That will only make you look like a fool my friend.
DC2
I agree that subs have antennas that float, which requires they get to depths necessary to raise during certain times of the day.
That’s also when they get coordinates for launches of TLAMs. Otherwise the TLAM’s come from surface ships.
My criticisms are well founded. The conventional ballistic missile has not been properly funded by Congress due to the concerns I have said. And I don’t know why you would ever think a hypersonic aircraft (missile or aircraft) would be considered cheap. Like I said earlier on this blog, our Air Force is crumbling and in desparate need of being recapitalized. The last thing we need to do is spend billions of dollars on this technology when we are currently bickering over funding 180 additional F-22s.
DC2
DA,
With regards to Deep Siren. Here is a link from Scientific American indicating that it hasn’t even gone through trials on a boat yet.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=navy-satellite-deep-siren
But it clearly indicates the current methods for communicating with subs. Which, by the way, is the exact method I have been trying to tell you.
You might want to listen to your own advice and try to learn something instead of telling people how wrong they are. Especially those that truly know what they are talking about.
I don’t need somebody that has never pissed in salt water (Ward and all the other squids know what I’m talking about) telling me what my Navy does in such an arrogant manner as you try to.
DC2
DA,
It was tested in 1995, so you aren’t talking about decades.
Seccondly. The discussion on Leeside Separation and subsequent release of stores occurs when the flat plane is inclined to 15 degrees. Therefore, you need to think about the heat/plasma generated on the opposite side of the plane. Again, you are talking about an aircraft created and maintained in the mold of the space shuttle. So how much money are you willing to spend to build/maintain the aicraft and dedicated weapons as well as train the crew?
Anything is possible DA with money. Given the porper amount of money, I could make monkeys fly out my butt too.
You must really do a lot for the military considering you are in country, riding in a Humvee listening to your iPod with your buddies, and still have all this time to know all this other stuff.
DC2
~Sigh~
OK Dearth, last things first.
——
RE:
DA,
And your arguments just don’t stick. Ultimately you, MAC, and myself are not the persons making the determination of who is right or wrong. That is left up to those that are reading this blog. And given your incessant personal attacks it is clear who is right and who is wrong.
I have told you perviously on this blog that the used of ICBMs is possible but will not happen. Congress seems to agree with me on this one, so any point you make is pointless.
Hypersonic flight has not been proven and tested in anything full scale to date. The closest we have come is strapping a scramjet missile onto the front of a rocket. Therefore any conjecture you bring up must be well founded. Given the fact that you have indicated you are in country right now and wearing an Army uniform, I would guess you know nothing more about it that what I would read in Popular Mechanics. Therefore, I would give MAC the benefit of the doubt since he has indicated his intellect in this area through various posts in the past.
Now given that statement, what we lack in current hypersonic manned flight we do have to a lesser extent in hypersonic missile technology. This is the area we should be focusing on as it makes the most sense in terms of technology maturity and budget.
You can continue with your personal attacks but I believe the true wannabe is you.
DC2
I had hoped it was all about a difference in opinion and a variance in faith in emerging technology. But in the end I was just pig rasslin’. Dang.