Hypersonic weapon detonated after lift-off: US military

As it stands now, there is an eight minute barrier that has to be overcome. The longest flights have lasted eight minutes. At that point the aircraft went out of control on the three tests that made it that long. Two suffered from pieces of airframe breaking off beyond the point the computer could maintain stability, and they tumbled. The third suffered a control valve failure at eight minutes.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks for the links.

The rendered image attatched to the Yahoo article looks quite different to the images in your links...




Is it because they have changed the design, or has the artist been a bit too carte blanch in their interpretation?

a reply to: solargeddon

Those tests were for an aircraft system, not a missile. They're similar in general shape, but not identical. The X-51 and X-43 were supposed to develop a combination engine that could be used in manned and unmanned weirdest.

a reply to: Zaphod58

The US version of the Yahoo article gives more details of today's launchpad computer malfunction, and it states that there was a successful flight in 2011.

In a previous test in November 2011, the craft had successfully flown from Hawaii to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, she said. On Monday, it was supposed to fly from Alaska to the Kwajalein Atoll.

Interesting.

a reply to: Olivine

Shorter flight the first time. But that's the nature of the beast. You have to stretch it out, and when you do, things go wrong.

Hypersonic flight is interesting, but it's proving to be incredibly difficult.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Much like you can only travel so fast under water our atmosphere comprised of water has a speed limit too. Now only of we could some how limit the interaction of the air and just hot knife our way to speedy Gonzales land....

a reply to: mindseye1609

There are ways. But they have interesting consequences when they go bad. But they work remarkably well when they don't.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I've heard of the one way that is really good at turning very expensive vehicles into chaff. I've racked my brain on this topic for quite some time. Whoever can come up with a low energy way to lower air resistance is going to hit it big. The fuel savings alone would be amazing on just shipping infrastructure let alone the possivlbility for massive speed increases.

My best idea is the hot knife idea. Something that somehow changes the air into something less resistant. IE liquid butter on the hot knife. Newer nano materials will probably be nice leap. Take the green frying pan tech and coat a plane in it. Probably already got something like that now.

a reply to: mindseye1609

There are two or three methods, one of which is very popular, due to its effectiveness. There has even been talk about putting it on transport aircraft to reduce drag.

The early stealth aircraft had a painted on method that had some interesting effects on local wildlife.

originally posted by: solargeddon
Hi all, did a search and couldn't find it up already, apologies if it is.

Being from the UK and not too into military stuff, I haven't heard of this, but perhaps there are those who have.

The weapon is part of the Pentagon's "prompt global strike" program designed to build conventional weapons that could take out targets anywhere on the planet within an hour's notice.

Well, all did not go well apparently...

"Less than four seconds into the lift-off phase, we terminated the flight," Pentagon spokeswoman Maureen Schumann told AFP.

What got me, was on of the comments said something about the US doesn't advertise its failures, which come to think of it, I think is quite true (at least not on the scale other countries do like North Korea).

So my questions to you guys is...

Have you heard of this weapon in development?

Isn't a weapon like this a little over-reaching?

Personally, I'm not quite sure how this goes towards supporting world peace, for two reasons, firstly the creation of such a weapon will surely draw others to follow suit, secondly surely an admission like this will opnly weaken the US position on the world stage from a military standpoint.

Really interested to know what you guys think.

Link to article

would you rather the only option for certain scenarios be a nuclear warhead that will kill tens of thousands and ruin miles of the earths surface or a small conventional explosive that can hit a small target without ruining the earth and killing a most a few bystanders if any at all?

this capability will allow action without costing trillions and mobilizing entire divisions for a ground invasion with attendant logistics, troop casualties and "collateral damage" I.E multiple deaths of innocents who get caught in the way during a long protracted ground war.

eventually special forces or expeditiary forces will have similar but man rated vehicles to get to any location in the world in minutes to hours.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Being on the forefront of this stuff has got to be sooo exciting. It's borderline magical what some of these things can do and I reckon there's a lot that I don't know about that's magical in every sense of the word.

I see in the op article it says reusable. Ain't that fancy. Any real reason behind that? Probably extremely expensive to make hypersonic craft is bet.

At these speeds you could probably break gravity's hold pretty easy too I imagine. One good climb and your seeing stars! It's just amazing what we've accomplished in the last 30 years or so. Seems we've been speeding up at an exponential rate too like forecast. Used to be a handful of black projects for an entire generation of people. Now it seems there's a nifty gadget in the works for just about anything anyone can ever think up and more.

a reply to: mindseye1609

The last couple of years have resulted in quite a few sore jaws from it bouncing off the floor. I've had some insane discussions on things out there.

These aircraft will require some intense development before they get any kind of reliability....expect to see a lot more self destruct notices yet....

originally posted by: Fargoth
If they are openly admitting it to it existing and failing in a test flight that means it's one of the weaker cards in their hand. I don't think it weakens the military considering they are still leaps and bounds ahead of the game.

What an assenine assessment.

You're a citizen in a nation, that has gone to war with nations that basically are incapable of defending themselves. And think your some sort of a brave guy? You're undefeated, because you're picking a fight with people who can't defend themselves.

If it's a sonic weapon, it will kill every living creature with an ear ... you won't hear the explotion, your head will just explode, and you'll see a lot of dead bodies on the ground, with minimum collateral damage.

That's what this weapon is for ... it's intended to kill people. And even if they let it explode in flight, does not mean the test was a failure ... the question is, did it create a sonic boom out of the hearing frequency or not. If it did, the test was probably a success.

It's beyond insanity ... the very fact that the US is building the weapon, makes them enemies of the Human race, that have no "sane" intentions.

originally posted by: bjarneorn

originally posted by: Fargoth
If they are openly admitting it to it existing and failing in a test flight that means it's one of the weaker cards in their hand. I don't think it weakens the military considering they are still leaps and bounds ahead of the game.

What an assenine assessment.

You're a citizen in a nation, that has gone to war with nations that basically are incapable of defending themselves. And think your some sort of a brave guy? You're undefeated, because you're picking a fight with people who can't defend themselves.

If it's a sonic weapon, it will kill every living creature with an ear ... you won't hear the explotion, your head will just explode, and you'll see a lot of dead bodies on the ground, with minimum collateral damage.

That's what this weapon is for ... it's intended to kill people. And even if they let it explode in flight, does not mean the test was a failure ... the question is, did it create a sonic boom out of the hearing frequency or not. If it did, the test was probably a success.

It's beyond insanity ... the very fact that the US is building the weapon, makes them enemies of the Human race, that have no "sane" intentions.

you are embarrassing yourself. please stop. the number of ways you have demonstrated your ignorance of this topic and your unsuitability to comment on it has to be a new record of some sort. in fact i cannot tell if this is a deliberate troll or there really are people that clueless.

a reply to: bjarneorn

....

Hyper sonic means much much faster then then speed of sound. It's about the speed it travels not some special sound weapon that splodes heads...

originally posted by: mindseye1609
a reply to: bjarneorn

....

Hyper sonic means much much faster then then speed of sound. It's about the speed it travels not some special sound weapon that splodes heads...

it's probably a deliberate troll.

a reply to: bjarneorn

So you don't have a problem with India, China, or Russia developing hypersonic missiles. But the US doesn't have the same right.

As for asinine statements, yours is right up there too. Sonic booms are just that, booms that you can both hear and feel if they are low enough.

If you bothered to read, you'd realize how asinine your statement is. How does anything go from standing still, to supersonic in four SECONDS. It's a conventional booster rocket, at four seconds, it's barely cleared the pad, and sure as hell hasn't created any kind sonic boom.

a reply to: bjarneorn

Wow where are you getting that from? I'm just stating the fact that the US military has some of the most advanced weapon systems available. And no hypersonic means it travels very fast. I'm an idiot and even I know that.

a reply to: bjarneorn

You realize when they say hypersonic weapon, they're referring to the delivery speed of a missile or payload, not an audio hypersonic frequency death ray gizmo, right?