Current US hypersonic weapons projects. (General)

There's multiple TBCC efforts going on, so I don't see this a a fundamental flaw of the configuration. And there's other air-breathing hypersonic programs, so it's not a case of USAF turning away from that. This may be as simple as a program finding itself in the valley of death and not finding a way out.
 
dark sidius said:
What mean sour grapes ?
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In the case of the SR-71, the Air Force Chief of Staff when it was cancelled had been denied a seat as a Blackbird pilot. He just flat wasn't good enough as a pilot, the Blackbirds only gave the pilots 3-5sec away from the instruments at a time. And the AFCoS took that personally. Very personally.
 
Scott Kenny said:
In the case of the SR-71, the Air Force Chief of Staff when it was cancelled had been denied a seat as a Blackbird pilot. He just flat wasn't good enough as a pilot, the Blackbirds only gave the pilots 3-5sec away from the instruments at a time. And the AFCoS took that personally. Very personally.
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So he acted out of petty spite? That's disgraceful and something that should've got him demoted.
 
NMaude said:
So he acted out of petty spite? That's disgraceful and something that should've got him demoted.
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Except he was the senior officer in charge of the air force. The only people above him in the chain of command were the civilian Secretary of the Air Force and the President of the United States.
 
dark sidius said:
May be it mean that the TBCC technology does not work in fact....
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The actual quote from one of the airforce officials was something along the lines of a combined cycle turbine ramjet being a more realistic goal. My read is that multimode engines with a scramjet capability are too complex or expensive for the relatively small advantage in speed they provide compared to an old school SR-71 turbine/ramjet, and I suspect thermal issues are also a part of the “no operational need” problem. For a one shot missile over several hundred miles, boosting directly to scramjet is cheap and the platform doesn’t have to structurally survive that regime for much more than five minutes. For a reusable system all of that gets more complicated and maybe Mach 3-4 is a much easier goal that bypasses a lot of exotic materials and an entire engine mode.
 
"What we are more interested in right now, in terms of a feasibility perspective, is a high-mach turbine engine," a U.S. Air Force official told The War Zone when asked about AFGSC's interest in Mayhem.

An extract of the Drive article https://www.twz.com/news-features/future-of-mayhem-hypersonic-strike-recon-aircraft-program-murky
It seam that USAF is interested by a high mach turbine , instead of a mix of TBCC. May be the futur variable cycle engine are more promising in term of speed and practice than the TBCC concept...
 
dark sidius said:
.....
It seam that USAF is interested by a high mach turbine , instead of a mix of TBCC. May be the futur variable cycle engine are more promising in term of speed and practice than the TBCC concept...
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Maybe the difference isn't big enough for a TBCC without the goal of going hypersonic
 
finance.yahoo.com

Hypersonic weapon startup Castelion has first prototype missile test

Castelion, a startup trying to build a hypersonic weapon for the Pentagon, tested its system for the first time, it told Reuters on Monday, as a growing group of small hypersonic arms makers challenge large defense contractors with less expensive, rapidly produced products. The United States...
finance.yahoo.com finance.yahoo.com
 
dark sidius said:
It seam that USAF is interested by a high mach turbine , instead of a mix of TBCC
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A high mach turbine is critical to making TBCC work, and it also enables other things.

The problem with TBCC is that turbines work OK up to speed X. Ramjets start working OK at speed X + 2. There has been a lot of work to close that gap - making turbines work at higher speeds and ramjets at lower speeds. There has been some, little progress but not enough to warrant flight testing (i.e. $5b for "SR-72").
 
quellish said:
A high mach turbine is critical to making TBCC work, and it also enables other things.

The problem with TBCC is that turbines work OK up to speed X. Ramjets start working OK at speed X + 2. There has been a lot of work to close that gap - making turbines work at higher speeds and ramjets at lower speeds. There has been some, little progress but not enough to warrant flight testing (i.e. $5b for "SR-72").
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I've heard this many times but ramjets have started at slower than Mach "X+2". ASALMs took over at Mach 2.5 and was good up to Mach 5+.

An Ex Rocket Man's Take On It

The ravings of a trained mind.
exrocketman.blogspot.com exrocketman.blogspot.com

And then you have stuff like P-51s, and even a Russian biplane testing ramjets. I've heard of ramjets with VG intakes for a wider speed range (though that was a long time ago, the specifics of which escape me). Also, wasn't RATTLRS (and previous related engine programs) supposed to demonstrate Mach 3 turbine engines?
 
quellish said:
(...) turbines work OK up to speed X. Ramjets start working OK at speed X + 2. There has been a lot of work to close that gap - making turbines work at higher speeds and ramjets at lower speeds. There has been some, little progress but not enough to warrant flight testing (i.e. $5b for "SR-72").
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Ramjets will light at subsonic speeds, they just have terrible efficiency that slow.
 
Forest Green said:
Interesting takeouts:

1. OASuW-2 (Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment II) - is that just going to be HACM?
2. CPS - sea-launched LRHW?
3. TBG - the warhead for ARRW and LRHW? But range is described as tactical? PrSM warhead for the future?
4. HAWC - longer range version of HACM?

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1: OASuW-2 is NOT JUST HACM, in fact HALO is the program and the speeds likely won't be hypersonic, instead ~mach 4 as the length of booster needed to reach hypersonic speed for scramjets is likely too long for carriers to handle as there are limits to things such as magazines on carriers and the elevators to bring up those munitions to the flight deck, etc..
2: Essentially yes...
3: TBG is SIMILAR to warhead/glider of ARRW, it's the OpFires warhead and may be an ARRW successor if its cancellation holds. For the LRHW warhead, look into AHW Advanced Hypersonic Weapon and X-41CAV Common Aero Vehicle programs from the 80's.
4: HAWC was literally just the proof of concept for the HACM. Essentially, it is a part of the HACM Program...
 
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TeourdBeourglaer said:
3: TBG is SIMILAR to warhead/glider of ARRW, it's the OpFires warhead and may be an ARRW successor if its cancellation holds. For the LRHW warhead, look into AHW Advanced Hypersonic Weapon and CAV Common Advanced re-entry Vehicle programs from the 80's.
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Just for clarification, LRHW/CPS follows a direct lineage from SWERVE (Sandia program from the 80s) to AHW (late 2000s to early 2010s) to CHGB (glide body for LRHW/CPS). CHGB is a winged conical body that has a low L/D. CAV was part of DARPA’s HTV program that paralleled AHW. CAV was a high L/D body that shared no commonality with SWERVE/AHW/CHGB, other than some of the materials utilized.
 
quellish said:
A high mach turbine is critical to making TBCC work, and it also enables other things.

The problem with TBCC is that turbines work OK up to speed X. Ramjets start working OK at speed X + 2. There has been a lot of work to close that gap - making turbines work at higher speeds and ramjets at lower speeds.
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Maybe a rocket that burns just long enough to bridge the gap? A sleeve that burns into wider throat to hand-off to the ramjet?
 
Josh_TN said:
You seem to be confusing multiple systems. Dark Eagle is the U.S. Army’s LRHW, which shares tge same all up round as the USN IRCPS. Both use the SWERVE based biconic glider and are surface launched. The AGM-183 is the USAF weapon that uses the glider from DARPAs Tactical Boost Glide program. We don’t know its range either, though it is rumored to be ~1000mi. It seems unlikely it will enter production. OPFIRES is another DARPA project primarily focused on a throttling solid rocket motor. It is not a weapon development program. The project uses a pallerized platform which can be mounted by the pallet handling trucks of the U.S. Army or USMC (eg HEMMT M1120). It is not related to Himars.
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I accidentally said Dark Eagle, but I meant Falcon which was a name for TBG program.
And yes Operational Fires is a program to develop a throttle-able SOLID rocket-booster to deliver the TBG warhead anywhere within ~100-1000 mi, something that most Hypersonic missiles are not going to be able to do as they're going to have a minimum range of a few hundred miles.
Not just produce a throttleable booster for no specific system...
No not the HIMARS trucks exactly, but that's not what I said. I said an MC HIMARS like truck.
So, whoopsie Daisy I got two Hypersonic weapons programs that were named dark eagle and falcon mixed up I'm such a moron!
 
sferrin said:
Just trying to keep them straight. So we have (pulled from a couple different articles recently posted):

1. AGM-183A - Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW). "The ARRW, like many of the emerging threats, is an air-launched, rocket-boosted unpowered hypersonic glider. To be developed under a $480 million initial contract, potentially worth $780 million including early production through 2023, the ARRW work is an extension to Lockheed’s pre-existing DARPA contract under which it is building the virtually identical Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) demonstrator." Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control

2. Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW). The HCSW is a solid-rocket-powered, GPS-guided missile, and is targeted at initial operational capability on existing combat aircraft in fiscal 2022. Lockheed Martin Space Systems

3. Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC). A scramjet-powered missile demonstrator similar in concept to the Air Force Research Laboratory/Boeing X-51A scramjet-powered vehicle that exceeded Mach 5 in a 2013 flight test. Both Lockheed Martin Skunk Works and Raytheon

4. Raytheon, which is partnered with Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital ATK) on the scramjet for HAWC, is also in final negotiations with DARPA to develop and test a TBG glide demonstrator. Raytheon’s newest work is believed to be supporting DARPA development of a ship-launched TBG for the U.S. Navy. In July, Lockheed was awarded a $40.5 million Navy Hypersonic Booster Technology Development (HBTD) contract, also believed to be related to this effort.

5. Another one of the projects in the Technology Transition Program is the Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE), which aims to demonstrate a hybrid propulsion system that would utilize a traditional turbine engine and transition to a Dual Mode Ramjet (DMRJ) for hypersonic travel. Ground tests are planned for 2019 or 2020. This is a joint effort between DARPA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

6. The Army and Navy are also working on developing hypersonic capabilities. The Army is working with DARPA on studying a ground-launched capability for hypersonic boost glide weapons through the Operational Fires project. This effort was funded at $6 million in FY18 and $50 million in the FY19 request. Operational Fires will also leverage work done on the Air Force TBG program. The Army was previously conducting work on the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon. A successful flight test was conducted in November 2011, but an August 2014 flight test failed due to a problem with the booster rocket used to launch the glide vehicle.

7. The Navy was tasked with a follow-on test using a downsized hypersonic vehicle. Downsizing provides the Navy with the ability to analyze possible future ship-launched capabilities. The Navy's Strategic Systems Programs office conducted this test in October 2017, dubbed Flight Experiment-1. A rocket carrying the glide vehicle was launched from Hawaii, after which the glide vehicle flew more than 2,000 miles in about 30 minutes. Other details of the test were classified.

8. In addition to the ARRW, HCSW, TBG, and HAWC, Lockheed's "Skunk Works" is believed to still be working on the High Speed Strike Weapon, which sources say is a tactical missile in the Mach 3-plus category that resembles its D-21 drone, which USAF launched from SR-71s and B-52s in the 1970s. The HSSW is derivative of the Revolutionary Approach to Time Critical Long Range Strike program Lockheed explored with the Navy in the early 2000s. (This sounds more like speculation as they seem to be conflating two different programs.)
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Im just curious how well do the missiles compare to some of the more first-gen russian radar based hypersonics like the Vympel R-27ERs?
 
publiusr said:
Maybe a rocket that burns just long enough to bridge the gap? A sleeve that burns into wider throat to hand-off to the ramjet?
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This is how a number of ramjet missile systems work, starting at least as far back as the old SA-6. The issue for hypersonic weapons is that this combustion chamber configuration is not compatible with a scramjet wave rider. Other scramjet configurations might be; HyFly I think was something that was supposed to transition from solid rocket to ramjet to scramjet.

The problem for reusable aircraft is having a rocket engine as your starting point.
 

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