Military Aircraft Hit Mach 20 Before Ocean Crash, DARPA Says

http://www.space.com/12670-superfast-hypersonic-military-aircraft-darpa-htv2.html

by Shalle • 13 years ago

80 81 13 years ago

jvzr• 13 years ago

Recent follow-up to the parent's old article: http://www.space.com/15388-darpa-hypersonic-glider-demise-ex...

unwind• 13 years ago

More recent, but still 11 months old. It's pretty cool to look at the trajectory maps while remembering that the flight lasted 9 minutes Mach 20 (around 7000 m/s) is fast. :)

tocomment• 13 years ago

When is the next test?

sabertoothed• 13 years ago

Why does it not have a mane?

metageek• 13 years ago

It did have one, but it ablated.

quarterto• 13 years ago

  Darpa Maintains Control of Unmaned Aircraft at Mach 20

...for three whole minutes!

elliottkember• 13 years ago

Don't forget, it traveled 650 miles in the process.

StavrosK• 13 years ago

or 1200 km.

melling• 13 years ago

Sounds like a lot to me. For the first DARPA Grand Challenge, for example, no car finished the race. The farthest went 7 miles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2004)

The next year 5 vehicles completed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2005)

Also, consider all of the rocket failures in the 1960's and we still made it to the moon by the end of the decade.

sukuriant• 13 years ago

at Mach 20, in our atmosphere with all the things it can collide into, and the latency that it experiences between itself and the ground...

that's an incredible feat.

zeteo• 13 years ago

>HTV-2 is part of an advanced weapons program called Conventional Prompt Global Strike, which is working to develop systems to reach an enemy target anywhere in the world within one hour

They're getting really close. Mach 20 is about an hour and a half to the opposite point on Earth.

carbocation• 13 years ago

Station a few of these in different locations and they're already there.

lifeisstillgood2• 13 years ago

I read this too, but my first thought was "if this had been Iran we would have invaded at midnight".

Its cool tech, yes, but really...

rayiner6• 13 years ago

Of course and that would've been the sensible thing to do. As Americans, we want a world where the U.S. is the one that has this technology, not countries who aren't the U.S. Our standard of living (1/4 of the world's resources for 5% of the world's population) literally depends on that state of affairs.

Goopplesoft• 13 years ago

Crazy, first thing I did was google how far it is to Tehran (albiet I'm Iranian). Seems like 30mins from New york at mach 20.

xyzzy1232• 13 years ago

Despite the "conventional" label, how are countries this thing passes over going to know you didn't pop a surprise nuke on it?

smacktoward• 13 years ago

They can't, if you launch the thing on top of something that looks like a nuclear ICBM and follows a ballistic flight path like a nuclear ICBM does. If that happens, the person on the other end is likely to jump to the conclusion that it is a nuclear ICBM, even if you insist it isn't. Which puts them on the spot to launch their own nukes, if they have any, before yours arrives. This "discrimination" problem has been a big one for the Prompt Global Strike program since its inception.

The vehicle in the story is part of the Air Force's attempt to solve this problem, by delivering the PGS payload via a spaceplane that flies in a flatter suborbital trajectory rather than an ICBM's higher trajectory. This is supposed to make it clear to the people on the other side that whatever has just been launched at them is not a nuke. It's unclear how successful this would be, though, since the spaceplane still has to be launched on a missile (possibly triggering any missile-launch early warning systems the opposition has), and nobody knows if in the heat of a crisis different angles of trajectory would be sufficient to reassure an anxious decisionmaker that they're not witnessing the beginning of a nuclear first strike.

51Cards• 13 years ago

August 18th, 2011? Possibly a few tests after this have already happened?

Edit: Looks like no third flight yet. Found this followup: http://www.darpa.mil/threeColumn.aspx?pageid=2147485247

Also found this paragraph to be interesting:

“The initial shockwave disturbances experienced during second flight, from which the vehicle was able to recover and continue controlled flight, exceeded by more than 100 times what the vehicle was designed to withstand,” said DARPA Acting Director, Kaigham J. Gabriel.

akavel• 13 years ago

And this: "[G]radual wearing away of the vehicle’s skin as it reached stress tolerance limits was expected. However, larger than anticipated portions of the vehicle’s skin peeled from the aerostructure."

And, dated: April 20, 2012

iandh3• 13 years ago

The "gradual wearing of the vehicle's skin" is called is called ablation.

Its a standard way both hyper sonic and reentry vehicles manage heat. Basically the skin boils off creating a pressure wave that the vehicle flights behind.

Wikipedia has a good description of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry#Ablative

Retric2• 13 years ago

Depending on what kind of impact angle they can achieve they may not need to add high explosives to this. Mach 20 is 400 times the kinetic energy of mach 1 and 40,000x the kinetic energy of a 76mph collision. So, even a 100lb craft = 1,000 times the impact energy of a 4,000lb truck at highway speeds.

saosebastiao• 13 years ago

Interesting perspective...I hadnt even thought of the possibility.

kingkawn• 13 years ago

meteors!

bane• 13 years ago

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god

AUmrysh2• 13 years ago

Kinetic Bombardment has been a sci-fi concept for decades, and it's interesting to see a real, possibly cost effective, technology that could make it real. At those speeds, you don't need explosives, just a lot of mass to slam into something.

blhack• 13 years ago

For the curious: this is what railguns do. There are no explosives, just a projectile going very, very fast.

starpilot• 13 years ago

This is what all guns do.

uvdiv• 13 years ago

It can't go Mach 20 in the atmosphere, so that wouldn't work.

Retric2• 13 years ago

A Thor style pure kinetic weapon was supposed to impact at around Mach 10, but this is a scram jet and as such should be able to maintain a significantly higher speed. Granted it's unlikely to maintain that at sea level, but it sounds like it impacted the water reasonably intact and so could probably do a powered dive. Also, around mach 9 is the break-even point where high explosives have more kinetic energy than chemical energy so even if it hit's at say mach 12 that's still a lot of energy.

colinshark• 13 years ago

If the US is going to field these weapons, we need to be cool with Russia and China tossing around non-nuclear ICBMs- because that is what this is.

Thrymr• 13 years ago

> non-nuclear ICBMs- because that is what this is.

Well, no, it's not. It's not a missile, it's not ballistic, and I don't know if the range is truly intercontinental. Not that the Russians and Chinese won't be concerned, but it is a rather different thing (and a much harder engineering problem).

EwanToo• 13 years ago

You're right it's not a ballistic missile, but it's end goal is in many ways the same:

"Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is a United States military effort to develop a system that can deliver a precision conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world within one hour, in a similar manner to a nuclear ICBM"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike

rayiner6• 13 years ago

Why do we need to be cool with it? The best-case scenario for the U.S. is having these weapons, and using its de-facto subsidization of Europe's defense to get U.K., France, etc, to push, via the U.N., Russia and China not to have these weapons. Unlikely to succeed, because after all who the hell cares what the U.K. and France have to say, but that should be the end-goal.

justin66• 13 years ago

You do know that Russia and China are both permanent security council members, so what you describe - bullying Russia and China into taking a position on this they do not want to take - is not possible?

Maybe this is cold war style thinking on my part but if I were China I would think to myself "yes, United States, please keep building that phenomenally expensive conventional weapon that would be really dangerous against the kind of surface fleet you have but we don't. That's a really... great... strategy you've got there." While publicly protesting against it, of course.

ry0ohki• 13 years ago

It did the equivalent of Boston to North Carolina in 3 minutes. Crazy testing something that covers so much distance so fast.

cadetzero2• 13 years ago

I found it really interesting to read about the underlying tech, scramjets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet

hencq• 13 years ago

I don't think the HTV-2 uses (or used rather, since this was in 2011) a scramjet though, but uses a rocket engine. The HTV-3X was supposed to use a scramjet it seems, but that was cancelled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project

cadetzero2• 13 years ago

As I understand, you can't hit those speeds with just a rocket engine. The HTV-2 is considered a rocket glider - it needs a rocket to propel it to altitudes and speeds where the SCRAMJET can kick in (as the scramjet itself has no moving parts).

baby• 13 years ago

mach 20 = 24 500.88 kmh (~6800m/s)

This is incredibly fast. Distance New York to Paris : 5851km[1] it would take 14 minutes for this plane to do the distance.

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=paris+to+new+york

pkfrank• 13 years ago

Why do we even reasonably need something this fast?

Wouldn't it be much more cost-effective to merely link up with strategic partners in other countries (Germany / Israel; Philippines; etc.) to give us the distribution we need for "conventional" missiles that would hit in the same timeframe?

mpyne3• 13 years ago

Missiles can be shot down by state actors, non-state actors can hide deep in areas which are out of range of the U.S. or its allies. But launching anything on an ICBM makes it almost impossible for other nations to distinguish from a nuclear missile launch.

Of course, if Prompt Global Strike is capable of carrying cargo with it then maybe countries like Russia or China would suspect it can also carry a small nuclear warhead, so it may be that concern doesn't completely go away.

run4yourlives• 13 years ago

Pretty sure this is 'old tech' because of the successful test of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon.

The Prompt Global Strike program seems to have moved on to other options.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike

will_brown4• 13 years ago

I am almost positive I have video of this aircraft. I took night video (1/13/13) of an aircraft near the Everglades, the aircraft moves so fast it appears that I am moving, but I was stationary. When I get home I will upload the video and add a link here to see if people agree.

thedufer2• 13 years ago

This article is from 2011, and there are no known tests since then.

dsfasfasf• 13 years ago

until now

iandh3• 13 years ago

There as yet to be a third flight. DARPA is surprisingly open about the Falcon HTV-2 test flights. The releases have included more info that I would have expected.

DARPA was actually live tweeting the 2nd flight.

will_brown4• 13 years ago

Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VqiPhsnMM&feature=youtu...

As "open" as DARPA is they are subject to confidentiality and are only allowed to disclose what the DoD allows them to disclose. I am no conspiracy theorist but compare the shape/light of the aircraft in my video to the artist night time rendition from the OP article. Even if the aircraft in my video is different, I can tell you I have never seen anything anywhere near as fast as the aircraft in my video including F-15's, F-16's, F-18's or the space shuttle when it lands (which breaks the sound barrier at very low altitude).

axus• 13 years ago

Watching that video feels like something out of Kerbel Space Program: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWBgUnL_ya4

will_brown4• 13 years ago

I commented earlier that I thought I recorded this aircraft at night on (1/13/13), people already bashed me saying this aircraft has only flown 2 times blah, blah, blah... (ever hear of military testing? They don't tell the public)

Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VqiPhsnMM&feature=youtu...

Why do I think it is same aircraft? When reading the OP article I immediately identified the artists night time rendering as the same aircraft I recorded in the video (video quality does not do it justice, but in person I can verify it looked identical to the artist rendering). Separately, the aircraft I recorded is by far the fastest thing I have ever seen, not in some UFO conspiracy way, but that I fly aircraft, attend airshows (F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18), saw Space Shuttles land (breaks sound barrier at low altitude) and I can saw I have never seen anything move as fast as the aircraft in my video.

Military Aircraft Hit Mach 20 Before Ocean Crash, DARPA Says

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