Posted on 08/25/2014 8:27:59 PM PDT by Robert A Cook PE
Advanced Hypersonic Weapon test aborted shortly after launch (linked at Drudge Report)
The Army’s test of an advanced hypersonic weapon failed shortly after takeoff early Monday, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The failure is a setback for a key part of the Pentagon’s strategic weapon program of building arms that can attack any point on earth in 30 minutes.
The missile carrying the weapon was intentionally blown up shortly after launch, the Pentagon said.
“Due to an anomaly, the test was terminated near the launch pad shortly after liftoff to ensure public safety,” the Pentagon said in a brief statement. “There were no injuries to any personnel.”
“Program officials are conducting an extensive investigation to determine the cause of the flight anomaly.”
The test was carried out from the Kodiak Launch Complex on Kodiak Island off the southern Alaskan coast shortly after 4:00 am eastern time.
The Advanced Hypersonic Weapon is a joint effort of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Army Forces Strategic Command as part of the Pentagon’s Prompt Global Strike program.
The test missile was supposed to boost the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon to near space. It was then set to glide to the Reagan Test Site on the South Pacific Kwajalein Atoll at speeds of nearly 4,000 miles an hour.
The distance is around 3,900 miles and an earlier test of the missile in 2011 reached the site in around 30 minutes. The first missile test achieved speeds of around Mach 5 or about 3,600 mph.
The new missile is a key element of the Prompt Global Strike program, which seeks high-speed strike arms that can hit targets rapidly with conventional warheads. The system is designed to attack terrorists or storage or development areas used for weapons of mass destruction and missiles that are discovered and must be struck quickly.
Pentagon spokeswoman Maureen Schumann said Sunday night the upcoming test would focus on “hypersonic boost-glide technologies”—ultra-high speed maneuvering atmospheric vehicle know-how.
Data from the test was to be used by the Pentagon to “anchor ground testing, modeling, and simulation of hypersonic flight vehicle performance and is applicable to a range of possible Conventional Prompt Global Strike concepts,” she said.
The flight test, the second for the new weapon, took place less than three weeks after China conducted a second flight test of its new Wu-14 hypersonic glide vehicle, a similar weapon system.
The Wu-14 test is part of a system that U.S. intelligence agencies say will be used to deliver nuclear weapons and possibly conventional long-range strikes against ships.
Defense analysts also have said the Wu-14 appears to be part of a Chinese version of Prompt Global Strike. The Wu-14 is said to travel at speeds of up to Mach 10 or nearly 8,000 miles per hour.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, quoting two Chinese sources, reported last week that the Wu-14 test also was a failure. The vehicle broke up soon after launch.
A notice of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon test was posted in the website of the Alaska Aerospace Co. that runs the Kodiak launch site earlier this month.
The company said in a press statement that the test will be designed to “collect a wide variety of data on hypersonic boost-glide technologies and to demonstrate the boost and atmospheric flight” of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon.
“Focus during the test will be on boost and atmospheric flight performance of aerodynamics; navigation, guidance, and control; and thermal protection system technologies,” the statement said.
The Army hypersonic weapon is one of several programs of hypersonic weapons and is considered a leading candidate for future production. Another hypersonic system favored by some in the Pentagon is the X-51, a scramjet powered cruise missile-sized weapon.
Another, the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2, has had some problems in development. The X-37B space plane is also categorized as a hypersonic weapon that could be used in the Prompt Global Strike program.
Lt. Gen. David L. Mann, commander of the Army Space and Missile Defense command, said during a speech in June that the new missile is a high-interest development program for the Pentagon.
“We’re very, very encouraged,” Mann said of the missile. “We executed a very successful test back in November of 2011. We’re on track to execute another test in August of 2014. And then we’ll see where it goes from there.”
Earlier in March, Mann told the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, being developed with Sandia National Laboratory, is “on track.”
Based on the results of the August test “we’ll go ahead and, again, work closely with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] as to what they would like us to do, what the next steps are,” Mann said. He added that a Navy version of the weapon is also being considered.
“Everything is kind of predicated on what happens after the [August] test,” he said.
Mann said Russia also is “heavily involved in looking at this kind of capability.”
A spokesman at the Kodiak Launch Complex referred questions to an Army spokesman, who could not be reached for comment.
Timothy A. Walton, a defense consultant at the Alios Consulting Group, said in a recent blog post that the Army hypersonic weapon has advanced significantly and is needed to counter and deter China’s hypersonic missiles.
“China poses a major and growing threat to U.S. joint operational access in the Asia-Pacific region,” Walton wrote in a recent article on Warontherocks.com.
“In the near term, the U.S. Army should continue developing the promising and relatively mature [Advanced Hypersonic Weapon] program, which has a clear objective,” Walton said. “It should also prepare for its swift transition into a formal, accelerated program of record—perhaps through the joint urgent operational need process—that can operationally deploy an actual weapon system within five years.”
The weapon also “can serve as a crucial Army contribution to the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific and the counter-[Anti-Access/Area-Denial] fight.”
I’m not saying the S turns were a weapon delivery idea because it would have to land after. The idea is that it was hypersonic and gliding in the atmosphere. I’m not going to look up the details for how high or fast, but they were up there.
The primary reason is to defeat our Anti-Ballistic missile capabilities. That has been stated directly from the Chinese PLA.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3195758/posts
So, it can achieve its speed in such a manner (theoretically), and I may be entirely wrong with my previous post, but I think the theory is not without merit as orbital speed is well above what we would call “hypersonic” in the atmosphere.
Given that, I STILL could be wrong, and I am not adverse to admitting such! :)
B4L8R
OK, I see their wishful thinking but our anti-missile-missile system works on radar and it won’t matter.
I put this into the basket of wishful thinking by the chinks. Of course, you know they have already put men on the moon, don’t you? LOL They are much more creative with their science fiction than the ruskies were.
I'm wondering if they are on the right path as laser weapons utilized during the boost phase would make such a platform ineffective anyways.
I suppose it depends on numbers. If you can get several through the boost phase, Hypersonic terminal velocity vehicles would certainly have a better chance to defeat our current generation of anti-missile defenses, but I would hope that DARPA and the government would be working on upgrades or future defenses would take such capabilities into account.
Alas, you did not get the joke! ... %100 ... 100$ ... Get it?
I got it, but in fact, I WAS somewhat wrong and hopefully I’ve corrected my mistake. :)
i’d call it the president dingleberry craps his pants scenario.
“increase in terminal velocity”
Our systems can take a ballistic missile out. How much faster will their gliders go than that?
Maybe it will be cheaper but I doubt it. They would still have to get to almost orbital altitudes.
Just more red Chinese bluster; “ours is faster, ours goes higher, ours is bigger, ours is stealthier”.
They hope to win by overwhelming numbers, just as they tried in their historical battles. North Korea for example. Our F22 can fight and kill 6 or 7 planes at once but how is it gonna do against 100, 1,000, 10,000? They had those kind of numbers on the ground in Korea but not in the air. Now they have the technology and money to build huge numbers.
The Russian hypersonic weapon also passed...
Ballistic missiles are easy to spot, after all they come over the horizon and don’t evade. Unlike us, the Chinese have been desperately working on ballistic missile defenses.
A hypersonic missile can come in at a much lower altitude and presents a much smaller window to countermeasures.
Only if you are expecting 1960's era warheads. Current warheads are maneuverable and include junk to spook defensive systems.
Simple maneuverability: Consider a cone, with the axis of rotation straight down the center. Slice the cone about one-quarter or one-third down from the tip, but make the cut line not parallel to the base. As the tip of the cone rotates, the body will no longer be axisymmetric. When this body re-enters the atmosphere, it will veer off a pure ballistic path. I'm sure that current warheads are more sophisticated than that.
Maybe they had it upside down, when they lit the fuse, like the old buzz bombs on the 4th of July when it was too dark to read the directions.
You can learn more from failures than successes.
Edison said that a couple times.
Ah, I hadn’t heard that, but it makes perfect sense.
That’s something any good engineer understands.
Smart thing would be to "marvel" at their achievements. Let them feel important - it's their psychological need. In the meantime, I hope we are developing what we need covertly...
The missile itself doesn’t really maneuver prior to bus separation, though, which is what I’m getting at.
“A space platform rail gun would be much better.... and cheaper.”
Why do you think that? I would think the weight, power generation, and logistics of reloading it with projectiles would make this ultimately more expensive.
I’m interested to hear what you think a cheap version would look like. It could be as simple as sending up a bunch of rods in a barrel, so to speak, where the rods are targetable. Still, weight, etc.
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