Posted on 07/02/2002 12:46:56 PM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
The US Navy (USN) says it has moved a step closer to flying a hypersonic air vehicle after successfully completing the first-ever ground test of a full-scale hypersonic cruise missile engine that uses conventional jet fuel and is integrated into a missile configuration."This is a major milestone for the hypersonic community," said Mike White, programme area manager for Advanced Vehicle Technologies at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which supports the USN.
Demonstration of this technology, the service says, lays the foundation for a viable high-speed strike weapon in the coming decade that can be launched at great stand-off ranges from surface ships, submarines or aircraft to attack time-critical, heavily defended or hardened and deeply buried targets in a fraction of the time it now takes to reach them.
The test is part of the four-year Hypersonic Flight (HyFly) demonstration programme, an Office of Naval Research (ONR) collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). HyFly seeks to demonstrate in flight a high-speed, long-range, hypersonic air-breathing test vehicle, with a dual-combustion, scramjet engine capable of reaching speeds of M6.5 at ranges of 600nm (1,110km). Cruising at M4, the air vehicle is expected to have a range approaching 800nm.
Besides the APL, Aerojet and Boeing support the effort, along with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the USN's Naval Air Warfare Center.
The team conducted the ground test on 30 May in a wind tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The engine performed at simulated, yet realistic hypersonic cruise conditions equivalent to M6.5 at an altitude of 90,000ft, according to a DARPA release. It achieved net positive thrust.
The USA has yet to demonstrate a hypersonic scramjet engine in flight. NASA's X-43A Hyper-X programme experienced a setback in June 2001 when an anomaly occurred early on in the first flight demonstration, causing the agency to destroy a hypersonic vehicle before it ignited (Jane's Defence Weekly 5 September 2001). The next flight attempt is not anticipated until mid-2003. The US Air Force is pursuing a non-axis-symmetric waverider missile design, designed to fly longer and further than the HyFly vehicle. Its progress is not as far along as the navy programme.
Gil Graff, ONR programme manager for Weapon Technology and deputy programme manager for HyFly, said the programme seeks only to demonstrate the operation of the hypersonic air vehicle. It will not validate the end-to-end performance of the missile and its warhead and guidance algorithms. These activities would be part of a yet-to-be-defined follow-on effort. Still, the axis-symmetric air vehicle design is intended to be directly traceable, with some modifications, to an operational air-launched cruise missile and surface-launched variant, he noted.The next series of ground tests are designed to verify operation of the scramjet at speeds of M3.5 to M4 in flight conditions during which it ignites and takes over after being boosted to these speeds by a host rocket.
They will likely occur in the September to December timeframe at the Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee, Graff said.
Unpowered flight tests of the air vehicle are expected to begin in late 2003. These will include a demonstration around March 2004 to validate that a submunition payload could be deployed at hypersonic speeds.
The programme plans a total of eight powered flights, starting in November 2004 at speeds of M4, with flights at M6 expected one year later.
Firing quantum torpedoes while at warp - I love it!
"4,560 miles an hour in a 65 zone. Boy, yo's inna HEAP o' trouble!"
That State Police car must have one hell of an engine....
They'd need JATOs fore and aft, just to be able to make the stop within state lines...
Must be one of them gated communities with the good schools...
Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase "hot pursuit," doesn't it? :o)
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