The Defense Department is seeking more funding to invest in hypersonics programs as China and Russia make their own push to develop the game-changing technology.
The proposed investments include funding for both offensive weapons, and the means to defeat them should these near-peer competitors succeed in creating missiles or aircraft capable of reaching speeds higher than Mach 5.
“We, the United States, do not want to be the second country to understand how to control hypersonics,” then-Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for research and engineering Alan Shaffer said in 2014.
The Air Force — joined by the Army, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and several defense contractors — has long been working to develop precision munitions and aircraft that can fly at or above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.
Meanwhile, military leaders and analysts have warned that countries including China and Russia have beefed up spending on hypersonic development and testing in recent years.
Pentagon leadership has identified hypersonics as part of the “third offset,” a list of leap-ahead technologies that will help the U.S. military maintain its edge against potential rivals. Hypersonic platforms have the potential to penetrate robust air defenses as their high rates of speed would make them difficult to stop. China and Russia are aware of this as well.
In one of her first public speeches as Air Force Secretary, Heather Wilson called for the need to “innovate faster and turn tighter” on emerging technologies including hypersonics.
“I think all of us are concerned about … the pace of innovation that’s taking place in the countries of potential adversaries,” she said at a recent Air Force Association event.
The Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal for the Missile Defense Agency included $75.3 million for “hypersonic defense activity” that would allow the MDA to increase hypersonic defense systems engineering activities, technology demonstrations and risk reduction, said Chris Johnson, the agency’s director of public affairs.
“Activities will include completion of a defense against hypersonics [analysis of alternatives], capability roadmap development and initial investment in sensor technology demonstrations and weapon concepts to address the advanced threat,” he said in an email.
The budget request came in response to a 2017 National Defense Authorization Act requirement to establish such a program. A 2016 report by the Air Force Studies Board titled, “A Threat to America’s Global Vigilance, Reach and Power — High-Speed Maneuvering Weapons,” found “no formal strategic operational concept or organizational sense of urgency” existed to respond to the challenges posed by hypersonic weapons and other emerging technologies.
Chinese researchers conducted three high-profile tests of the Wu-14 hypersonic strike vehicle in 2014 and an additional two flights in 2015, according to a 2016 Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies report titled, “Hypersonic Weapons and U.S. National Security: A 21st Century Breakthrough.” Russia has also reiterated its plan to test a new hypersonic weapon by 2020.
In a June hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Vice Admiral J.D. Syring, Missile Defense Agency director, called for the need to develop additional defensive capabilities to curb the efforts of adversaries abroad, noting that both China and Russia announced successful hypersonic glide vehicle launches in 2016.
“To address the hypersonic threat, MDA will perform sensor and weapon technology demonstrations from radars, high altitude drones and then in a space layer,” he said, adding that the agency plans to execute a series of ground, airborne and space-based technology demonstrations to track advanced hypersonic threats.
This move to boost the development of defensive capabilities against hypersonic weapons signals “a real shift in the threat environment” that is driving both the need for offensive hypersonic vehicles and defensive systems, said Todd Harrison, director of the aerospace security project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Research and development for offensive hypersonic technologies has been ongoing for decades “at a relatively low level,” Harrison noted. “And it seems like now, based on whatever intelligence assessments they are receiving, the military seems to be getting very serious.”
In 2012, the Air Force spent just under $79 million on hypersonics science and technology efforts. It requested over $292 million in the 2018 presidential budget for hypersonics S&T, including $90 million for prototyping, according to the Air Force.
Efforts are focused on developing technologies for a high-speed strike weapon that could be launched from fighters and bombers and fly at hypersonic speeds to their intended target on the ground. The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with DARPA and NASA on several efforts in that regard, including two flight demonstration programs called the hypersonic air-breathing weapon concept, or HAWC, and tactical boost glide, or TBG.
The programs reflect the two current development approaches to hypersonic weapons and vehicles. The boost-glide method involves a rocket lifting a vehicle into the atmosphere, then releasing the glide vehicle to reach Mach 5 and higher speeds upon descent. The Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command tested a demonstrative long-range glide vehicle called the advanced hypersonic weapon in 2011, but the service did not comment on any present hypersonic development activity.
The other approach is placing a propulsion system such as a supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet, aboard a long-range cruise missile-type vehicle that could then fly at speeds up to 15 times the speed of sound, according to NASA.
DARPA and the Air Force Research Laboratory’s munitions directorate both declined to comment on either program. Lockheed Martin, who is partnering with the agencies on the HAWC program, and Raytheon, who is assisting with tactical boost glide, also declined to comment.
Hypersonics became a major focus for AFRL in the mid 1990s when then-Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall pushed for the creation of a technology program to forward its advancement, said Bob Mercier, chief engineer for the high-speed systems division for the aerospace systems directorate at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
The laboratory soon identified the near-term applications for the technology in weapon-type systems, and focused initial efforts in that arena, he said in an interview.
“But we’ve also been very cognizant of the mid- and far-term applications, where one might want to do something like an [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] platform, larger-type weapons … and some reusability associated with that.”
Between 2010 and 2013, the laboratory conducted several hypersonic flights with the X-51 Waverider, an unmanned scramjet aircraft jointly developed by AFRL, NASA, DARPA, Boeing and Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne — now Aerojet Rocketdyne — Mercier said.
Two flights — one in 2010 and one in 2013 — reached speeds over Mach 5 for several minutes, with the 2013 flight setting a record for the longest ever air-breathing hypersonic flight to date, according to the Mitchell Institute report. The Waverider traveled over 230 nautical miles in just over six minutes after being released from a B-52 bomber, and its success “proved that scramjets were viable,” Mercier said.
But there were still many questions left to be answered that were outside of the scope of the Waverider’s flight test, including control and other aerodynamic issues, Mercier noted. To answer those questions, the Air Force Research Laboratory, together with NASA and Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group, began work on the hypersonic international flight research experimentation, or HiFIRE, program in 2006, he added.
The goal of the program is to perform several hypersonic flight experiments at a low cost, between $5 million and $10 million per flight, said David Adamczak, flight lead for the flight projects for the U.S.-led HiFIRE tests.
The team is currently preparing to perform a guided navigational control flight test by early July at the Royal Australian Air Force Woomera Test Range in South Australia, he said.
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