Is the US hitting back with a hyper-strike?
So, we can say that the empire strikes back. After Russia demonstrated the hypersonic Kinzhal in the flesh in Ukraine, the Americans faced a difficult choice: either create weapons, capable of leveling the hypersonic inventions of the Russians, or revising the entire defensive concept.
Several American specialized publications immediately paid attention to this issue. Both options cost a hell of a lot of money separately, and everyone understands this very well.
What can the US offer as a response? Too much and too little at the same time.
Alex Hollings recalls that a very effective remedy against speed is ... speed! And the answer to Russian hypersonic projects could be, for example, a bomber that can fly at a speed of about 10M. And it's not exactly fantasy.
Hollings reminds history "Blackbird" SR-71, which was able to perform reconnaissance missions in the sky of Libya, where it was very uncomfortable, since the Libyans had enough air defense systems and missiles for them.
Lockheed Martin designed the SR-71 around a simple concept: nothing can knock you down if it can't catch up with you. The maximum speed of the Blackbird, Mach 3,2, set new records for jet-powered aircraft, but in order to avoid Soviet missiles of the S-75 and S-125 complexes capable of reaching speeds of 5M, the SR-71 would need to go beyond your framework.
The SR-71 proved to be a very fast aircraft, really capable of evading missiles. In one of the flights, US Air Force Major Brian Schul set a speed record of 3,31M, or almost 3 km / h. True, the official record is much lower. But there is such a thing, in 950, the SR-1976 set an absolute speed record among manned aircraft - 71 km / h.
As they say, if you want to live, you won’t accelerate so fast ...
And now, many in the United States believe that the hypersonic speeds of new aircraft can become a lifesaver against Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles.
We can agree that the history of SR-71 flights over Libya (and elsewhere) is a completely normal argument. Statistics (American) claims that over 30 years of service, about 71 missiles were fired at the SR-4 and none of them reached the target.
The fact that not a single Blackbird was shot down by a missile is a fact. But the figure of 4 is likely "a little exaggerated." However, that does not detract from the characteristics of the SR-000.
Today, the United States frankly lags behind Russia and China in the hypersonic race, but the fact that in the history of the country there was the world's fastest aircraft is somewhat encouraging.
The legacy of the SR-71 seems to have inspired the US Air Force to come up with a plan to win the hypersonic arms race in a different way. The American savior may not be a rocket, but an aircraft: the Lockheed Martin SR-72 bomber.
In general, little is known about the top-secret program that is developing the technology necessary to bring a hypersonic aircraft to life, something, and when necessary, the Americans know how to keep secrets.
But it became known that the program has a name: "Project Mayhem". And the fact that carefully edited interviews on a given topic appear in the media from time to time allows us to draw certain conclusions.
And at the same time, you can try to draw boundaries between American, Russian and Chinese developments in this area.
The Russian Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missile is certainly fast (the term hypersonic describes flight speeds in excess of 5M), but it is the weapon's unique combination of speed and maneuverability that confuses modern air defense. Even the most modern defense systems cannot yet accurately intercept missiles moving at hypersonic speeds when changing course.
As a result, Russia, China and the United States are competing to deploy various types of hypersonic missiles. Russia and China claim that some of them are in service. The US appears to be lagging behind.
One possible reason for this lag, US analysts say, is that America's plans for hypersonic technology are more ambitious than just pushing a warhead beyond 5M. One of the goals is to develop a reusable hypersonic aircraft that could break through enemy air defenses while also avoiding the exorbitant cost of disposable hypersonic weapons.
The US has exploited this potential in inventions that have accumulated over the decades. It is not for nothing that American developments of high speeds have dominated the world for a long time, so it is simply a sin not to use it.
So, back in 1957, Boeing proposed the X-20 Dyna-Soar space plane for bombing and reconnaissance.
Neil Armstrong himself was among the pilots selected for the program, and in 1967 Air Force test pilot William "Pete" Knight flew his rocket-powered "North American" X-15A-2 at Mach 6,7.
By 2004, the NASA X-43A scramjet had reached Mach 9,6, and in 2007 there were reports that Skunk Works and the Air Force were working on an unmanned SR-71 dual-mode scramjet, dubbed the SR-72.
Russia's MiG-31 supersonic interceptor aircraft, already the world's fastest combat aircraft, can now carry Kinzhal hypersonic missiles that can outrun and outperform all known air defense systems.
The appearance of the Kinzhal in the war in Ukraine has brought a new emphasis on hypersonic technology, although the US use of this technology may be very different from that of Russia and China.
By 2015, the SR-72 came out from behind a veil of secrecy. The Lockheed Martin website said the aircraft could be in service by 2030. Up until March 2018, Lockheed publicly announced its efforts to deploy the SR-72, but immediately after Putin's Kinzhal speech, the company edited out any external reference to the aircraft.
There are two options: either the company abandoned the effort, or the work again received state funding and the corresponding secrecy stamp. The second seems more reasonable and likely.
Meanwhile, the hypersonic weapons deployed by America's competitors so far are similar to ballistic missiles, albeit much faster. Known as gliders, they are accelerated to hypersonic speeds by a missile before detaching and gliding toward their target at speeds up to Mach 20. How rocket-guided weapons change course remains a secret, but experts such as Chris Combs of the University of Texas at San Antonio, who specializes in hypersonics and aerospace engineering, suggest it is likely done using a combination of gas engines and aerodynamic planes. on hydraulic drive.
Another type of hypersonic weapon that has yet to enter service with any country is the hypersonic cruise missile powered by a supersonic ramjet or scramjet, the same experimental propulsion technology believed to be used for the SR-72. A hypersonic cruise missile flies similar to an airplane or drone-suicide, but it does not work well at low speeds, because the engine requires huge amounts of air that cannot be obtained at low speeds. The output is a rocket booster for the initial acceleration.
And of course, nowadays all hypersonic weapons have a common drawback: cost. A recent Pentagon estimate suggested that current hypersonic missile projects could cost between $89,6 million and $106 million each. And this is just in development. That's more than the F-35A, which is expensive to the point where it's considered obscene.
However, in August 2020, the Air Force created a new program to develop hypersonic missiles (70 projects in total as of 2021). This project, known as "Mayhem", aims to deploy a "multipurpose cruiser" equipped with a ramjet engine.
In terms of cost, a hypersonic multirole aircraft could be a game-changer. In terms of capabilities, this could tip the global balance of hypersonic forces back towards the United States.
To begin with, the Mayhem project is seeking to deploy an ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Strike Capability) hypersonic multi-purpose platform that can carry at least three payloads. Two of them are standard types of weapons for the US Air Force (apparently, we are talking about rockets and bombs), the third will be dedicated to the old SR-71 specialty - intelligence.
Based on these documents, it is likely that the weapon being developed under the Mayhem project is not a hypersonic missile, but a hypersonic drone with the same operational parameters as the SR-72.
Also, it looks like the military is developing a new type of engine to power the SR-72. As NASA's years of experimentation have shown, a traditional scramjet will not meet the multipurpose requirements of the Mayhem project, as scramjet engines only operate at high speeds. Instead, Lockheed Martin appears to be developing a combined cycle scramjet that incorporates a traditional jet engine into its design for initial boost. An engine of this type would be a huge leap forward from what is currently available and would require complex engineering to solve many design problems. This is probably what is holding the project back.
The main difference between a scramjet engine and a conventional turbojet engine is the absence of a compressor that supplies the combustion chamber with huge masses of air for burning fuel. The required pressure of the air flow in the scramjet is achieved due to the speed of the aircraft. Accordingly, at low speeds, a scramjet is completely inefficient compared to a ramjet. This means that a scramjet platform cannot fly slow enough to land and can therefore only be used once. But a combined cycle scramjet, which includes a traditional jet engine, can fly just like an airplane, in which case nothing will interfere with its repeated use.
There is a grain of reason in this.
Instead of destroying an expensive scramjet by using it to launch a disposable rocket, Mayhem can use a combined cycle scramjet for a drone. This system will use a traditional jet engine to take off and accelerate to about Mach 3 before switching to a scramjet engine that will accelerate it to Mach 5 and beyond.
Once in enemy airspace at this speed, the Mayhem can fire conventional bombs and missiles at targets or conduct reconnaissance before flying back. Nothing new in tactics, the SR-71 also flew over Libya.
Tempting? Oh yeah. The combined engine will have to combine two different supply and control systems in one power plant. Pretty contradictory. American engineers working in the field of hypersonics say that engines that are optimal for takeoff and flights at subsonic speeds are very different from engines for hypersonic flights.
The problems of the scramjet are very significant in their essence. For example, the ignition of the air-fuel mixture when it passes through the engine at a speed greater than the speed of sound. Experts call this "holding the flame." To date, no country has yet succeeded in placing a ramjet propulsion system in a rocket, let alone an aircraft, although the US has conducted some encouraging tests. In the fall of 2021, Northrop Grumman successfully flew a rocket-sized scramjet under the DARPA Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program, and in March 2022, Lockheed Martin tested its prototype with the same success.
The technology that powers Mayhem is an extension of the scramjet engines currently used in HAWC, but the scramjet engines used for HAWC only offer half the (hypersonic) combined cycle needed for a platform like the Mayhem or SR-72. For the Mayhem to fly like an airplane, designers must devise a way to incorporate a conventional jet engine into the design without blocking the airflow in the scramjet or making the aircraft too heavy to fly.
The hypersonic arms race runs parallel to stealth aircraft technology, but it nonetheless affects how the military develops and uses this technology. Stealth technology is physics-limited when used on aircraft, especially fighter jets.
In order for an aircraft to perform the aerobatics required for the fighter class, it (the aircraft) needs vertical rudders, horizontal aerodynamic control surfaces such as flaps and ailerons, and air ducts to power the jet turbines inside the fuselage. These elements tend to produce an easily readable radar picture of the aircraft. Stealth planes are not actually invisible to radar, they just reflect minimal energy. In fact, many of them can be easily spotted using low frequency radar bands.
Antennas with AFAR, capable of reading reflections from several frequency ranges, will especially complicate the life of stealth aircraft. US Air Force experts have calculated that while maintaining the current dynamics of the development of antenna systems, after 2030, even the F-22 will have a minimal chance of surviving in the airspace.
In this case, the development of American companies in the field of hypersonic aircraft looks very, very promising. Speed may well be opposed to invisibility, which will no longer be so. An unmanned aerial vehicle made by Mayhem could fly into enemy territory with impunity, engage a target or collect intelligence, and fly again without being shot down. And, as Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall explained about other drone programs in development, not having a pilot on board could allow the aircraft to take big risks.
This would mean significant cost savings. Most of the US arsenal of air-launched missiles and bombs ranges in value from tens of thousands to several million dollars each. Instead of seeing these weapons as obsolete, they could still be just as effective if they were delivered to targets at hypersonic speeds from inside the aircraft's bomb bay. A combined cycle scramjet like the one planned for the SR-72 could allow the US to offset the high-velocity missile capabilities used by Russia and China, and it could carry many of America's existing munitions into the hypersonic age.
Alas, accommodating various payloads on a hypersonic aircraft requires more subtlety than a simple underwing suspension.
“Going to Mach 5 and beyond generates extreme levels of heat, resulting in the need for innovative materials, sensors and electronics to withstand these speeds all the way,” says Dave Berganini, vice president of hypersonic and strike systems at Lockheed Martin. Missiles and Fire Control».
That is, as such, the external suspension is not applicable for speeds above 5 km / h, since it can cause the destruction of weapons from temperature. And perhaps the device will also need to maneuver ...
Since official information is scarce, there are some hints that the US Air Force and its Mayhem partners may be very far ahead in the development of hypersonic weapons. More precisely, hypersonic weapon carriers.
It turns out that the United States went on a slightly different path of development. Russia and China began to create hypersonic weapons, that is, missiles. In fact, yes, it worked, but these weapons systems are very expensive. American designers decided that the creation of a reusable weapon carrier capable of moving at hypersonic speeds was a more promising option.
You know, this is all somewhat reminiscent of the space race that unfolded in the recent past. The USSR relied on relatively inexpensive single-use ships, while in the USA the emphasis was on reusable ships. As a result, after many years, the Americans will definitely take the lead with new, and most importantly, cheap reusable ships.
The cost of delivering 1 kg of cargo to a low reference orbit by the Russian Proton is about $2, while the Falcon does it for $800 and promises that it will be even lower.
A reusable hypersonic bomber will definitely be more profitable than any disposable hypersonic missile weapon, at least in that it can hit several targets at a time and it is likely to return and repeat the flight.
Therefore, there are certain prerequisites for the fact that American engineers will hammer the topic long and hard, because the result will be worth it. Considering how many companies in the United States are involved in developments in the aerospace field, the result can be positive, and, whatever you take, a multi-cycle scramjet, a hypersonic carrier as a whole is a matter of “when”, not “if”.
Russian "Daggers" were also considered fiction and fantasy a couple of years ago.
Today one can speak with a grin about the desires of the Americans, but it is better not to do so. Elon Musk's lesson is still fresh. This “That's when it flies, then we'll talk” resulted in the loss of a huge piece of the space launch market for Russia. So the “when” may happen in the very near future.
The result of the work of American aerospace concerns may well be such that the US Air Force will have at its disposal a hypersonic carrier of conventional weapons. And such a probability of development of events will have to be reckoned with.
However, time is still playing on the side of Russia and China. But - only for now.
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