DARPA Lifts the Covers on Vulcan Engine

Wowser - Now, question is... who got the pic for the russians ?

Is that some type of wind tunnel model tarted up or a desk top model ? any other pics ?

Originally posted by Dan Tanna
You move a few feet side ways or roll out the way at that speed what evers trying to hit you will miss by a country mile. The old Granit with ram jets alone had a G limit of + 16... and how old is that ?

Surface to Air missiles typically do not attempt an actual collision - they get close enough (few hundred feet) and then detonate, causing a shockwave and throwing out fragmentation over a wide area.

At Mach 5 or so, it wouldn't take much disruption from a shockwave for your hypersonic aircrafts flight to become untenable.

1960s era Soviet SAMs such as the S-75 Dvina have a warhead with a lethal range of over 800ft radius at altitude - they were also typically fired in salvos of 10 to 20, blanketing an area of sky.

When you are relying on speed for survivability, thats the *only* thing you can rely on - manoueverability is out the window.

[edit on 21/6/2008 by RichardPrice]

[edit on 21/6/2008 by RichardPrice]

reply to post by RichardPrice




aaahhh right - now thats a different ball game. I thought wrongly we were talking about direct intercepts not shock wave 'proximity' weapons.

My bad. Hitting a shock wave at mach 5 . . . . . oh thats gonna spoil your day.

Explosive Engine Key to Hypersonic Plane

The military wants to build a new kind of aircraft that can take off from a runway, fly at over six times the speed of sound, and then come back home. No one is quite sure whether Darpa and the Air Force can pull it off -- right now, it'd take a combination of a standard plane, a rocket, and an "air-breathing" scramjet-powered craft to get it done. But if there's any hope at all of putting this $800 million plane in the air, it'll need a whole new kind of engine.

The program to build that engine is called Vulcan. And, in a briefing to potential builders, Darpa recently unveiled new details about the ambitious engine effort.


rest of blog

www.youtube.com...

nice vid

[edit on 27-6-2008 by Jezza]