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Old 08-14-2018, 02:09 PM
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Arrow The U.S. Military Is Going All In on Hypersonic Weapons

The U.S. Military Is Going All In on Hypersonic Weapons
by Dave Majumdar - August 14, 2018 Topic: Security Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: China/Russia/Hypersonic Weapons Lockheed MartinMilitary
RE: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...-weapons-28767

The United States Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a second contract to develop a hypersonic missile called the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW).

Washington is stepping up its efforts to develop and field hypersonic weapons as it competes to retain America’s technological advantage over Russia and China, both of which are developing similar systems.

As part of the Pentagon’s efforts to keep abreast of Moscow and Beijing’s developments, the United States Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a second contract to develop a hypersonic missile called the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW). Earlier this year in April, the Air Force awarded the company a contract to develop the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW). Under the new contract, Lockheed Martin will provide the critical design review, test and production readiness support for the ARRW.

"We are going to go fast and leverage the best technology available to get hypersonic capability to the warfighter as soon as possible," Air Force secretary Heather A. Wilson said in a statement.

The ARRW award is what the Pentagon calls an undefinitized contract. “This undefinitized contract action allows the Government to meet urgent needs by authorizing the contractor to begin work before reaching a final settlement on contract terms and conditions, to include a final negotiated price,” the Air Force said in a statement. “The contract is expected to be definitized within 180 days of award.”

As mentioned previously, the ARRW is the second of two Air Force hypersonic weapons programs. On April 18, 2018, the service awarded Lockheed Martin a contract for the HCSW air launched hypersonic missile that is worth $928 million through to an early operational capability that is expected in 2021.

“Our goal is rapid development and fielding of the HCSW system, and this contract is the first step in achieving that goal,” John Snyder, vice president of Air Force Strategic Programs at Lockheed Martin, said at the time. “Design, development, production, integration and test experts from across Lockheed Martin will partner with the Air Force to achieve early operational capability and deliver the system to our warfighters. We are incredibly proud to be leading this effort.”

The Air Force is pursuing the ARRW and the HCSW as prototyping efforts to accelerate American hypersonics research and development. As such, the Air Force is using “rapid prototyping authorized by Section 804 of the FY16 National Defense Authorization Act to explore the art-of-the-possible and to advance these technologies to a capability in 2021,” the service said in a statement.

While both weapons are similar in that they are air-launched hypersonic systems, the two missiles are not redundant or duplicative. “The ARRW and HCSW efforts are developing unique capabilities for the warfighter and each has different technical approaches, “ the Air Force said. “The ARRW effort is ‘pushing the art-of-the-possible’ by leveraging the technical base established by the Air Force/DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] partnership. The HCSW effort is using mature technologies that have not been integrated for an air-launched delivery system.”

But the ARRW and HCSW are not the only hypersonic weapons technologies the Pentagon is pursuing. The Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency,

Air Force, Navy and Army signed a memorandum of agreement to work cooperatively on hypersonic boost glide technology development on June 28. Russia and China have already made significant strides in the development of such boost glide weapons.

"The Joint Team requires the right mix of agile capabilities to compete, deter, and win across the spectrum of competition and conflict," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein said. "We must push the boundaries of technology and own the high ground in this era of great power competition and beyond."

In this particular case, both Russia and China have pushed the boundaries of technology when it comes to hypersonic weapons. Russia has fielded the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal aeroballistic missile and is developing the Avangard hypersonic boost-glide vehicle and the Tsircon hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile. China has also been working on hypersonic boost-glide vehicles and other hypersonic weapons technologies. The United States is essentially playing catch up at this point.

About the writer: Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for the National Interest.
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O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Old 08-14-2018, 02:16 PM
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Arrow Why the U.S. Military Should Fear "Ramjets" (Old Technology making a comeback)

Why the U.S. Military Should Fear "Ramjets" (Old Technology making a comeback)
By: Charlie Gao - 8-10-18
RE: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...-ramjets-28422

Ramjets have made somewhat of a comeback in military technology recently. While ramjets powered many anti-air missiles throughout the Cold War, more recent designs eschewed them in favor of multi-stage rocket boosters or simply more powerful rockets.

Ramjets have made somewhat of a comeback in military technology recently. While ramjets powered many anti-air missiles throughout the Cold War, more recent designs eschewed them in favor of multi-stage rocket boosters or simply more powerful rockets. However, a new crop of ramjet designs, mostly revolving around solid fuel ramjet technology have put the ramjet back on the map.

Ramjets were first developed for use on missiles in the late 1940s as a technology to allow missiles to sustain supersonic speeds for long durations. Traditional jet engines were still subsonic at the time, and rockets could not propel large payloads fast enough. The first prototype ramjets were simply fuel sprayers placed in a tube with a flare used to ignite the fuel. HVAR rockets were used to accelerate these tubes up to supersonic velocities.

Tests of these primitive ramjets in 1945 were successful and showed further potential for the design. Some difficulties were encountered with prototype rockets tearing themselves apart under acceleration and with the perfecting the fuel to air mixture ratio, but these were solved by 1949 with the eXperimental Prototype Missile (XPM), which demonstrated that a ramjet powered missile was viable.

The XPM incorporated key aerodynamic innovations that would come to define later ramjets. At supersonic speeds, the air coming in would often be going too fast, so the air was compressed then released into an expansion chamber to slow it down to subsonic velocities. It was then mixed with fuel and ignited in a combustion chamber, creating pressure. This pressure causes the combustion products to exit the engine at a higher velocity than the surrounding air, causing thrust.

Integration of the ramjet technology into an actual missile occurred within the Talos program , which aimed to provide U.S. Navy ships with a long range (out to fifty miles) anti-air missile. The first Talos was an evolution of the XPM, incorporating a rocket booster into the back to accelerate the missile to requisite speed before igniting the ramjet and integrating radar homing mechanism and warhead. It reached service in 1952.

The ramjet nature of the missile meant that a simple seeker-warhead-engine layout could not be used for in the RIM-8 Talos. Because the entire missile was an engine of sorts, the designers had to be crafty in where they placed the missile components.

Instead of a singular antenna in the nose, four antennas used to receive the radar homing signal were placed around the intake. The warhead was placed inside the innerbody that was used to compress air in the intake of the missile. All guidance electronics were placed around the channel through which air flowed through the missile.

The RIM-8 was a successful design, scoring the Navy’s first surface-to-air missile kill in 1968 on a North Vietnamese MiG-21. It was also adapted into a long range antiradar missile to strike NVA radar sites.

But America was not the only one using ramjets in this role. The Soviets also implemented ramjets in the 2K11 “Krug” (SA-4) and 2K12 “Kub” (SA-6) missiles. Unlike American missiles which had a singular booster behind, the 2K11 featured four rocket boosters on each side of the missile in order to get it up to speed. The 2K12, on the other hand, used an odd partial inversion of this design, with four ramjet air intakes on all sides of the missile and a central booster.

However, as rocket technology advanced, ramjets began to look less and less attractive. The rocket-powered RIM-66 Standard Missile would come to replace the RIM-8, and the 9K37 Buk would do the same for the 2K12 Kub.

While the ramjet went out of fashion for surface-to-air missile designs in the late 1970s, the Soviets began looking into them to make their anti-ship missiles faster at the same time. This resulted in the P-270 Moskit and P-800 Onyks. The Indian/Russian BrahMos missile is also ramjet powered. While the West is more focused on subsonic anti-ship missiles, the use of ramjet technology by Russia in the anti-ship role is likely to continue as their doctrine emphasizes speed.

But recently the west has been interested in ramjets again. While they are unlike to return in the surface-to-air role, ramjets are now being employed in the air-to-air role by missiles such as the MBDA Meteor .

While most air-to-air missiles continually lose energy after their boost phases, ramjet powered missiles retain energy a lot better due to the continual thrust provided by the ramjet engine. This makes them harder to evade, as the missile has more energy in the final intercept stage. This was a known feature of some ramjet powered surface-to-air missiles like the British Sea Dart, and one of the reasons why it proved so deadly against Argentine aircraft in the Falklands War.

Artillery shells are another application where the continual thrust of a ramjet engine is a desirable feature. Unlike current rocket-assisted projectile shells, which suffer from the same drawbacks of only being able to provide thrust for a relatively small time, ramjet shells can provide a “boost” for much longer.

The integration of ramjets onto air-to-air missiles and artillery shells was made possible by the miniaturization of ramjet technology. First gen missile ramjets such as those featured on the RIM-8, 2K12, 2K11, and Sea Dart all relied on liquid fuel in their ramjets, so they had to be very very large. The new ramjets use solid fuel instead, allowing them to be more compact. They also have a limited “throttling” capability, allowing the missile to control the rate at which it uses fuel.

About the writer: Charlie Gao studied Political and Computer Science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national security issues.
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O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
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