Pentagon Working To Regain U.S. Superiority In Hypersonics
WASHINGTON — In 1959, The U.S. Air Force Navy NASA partnered with us to fly the first piloted hypersonic test plane, the X-15.
During That flight is a high-speed vehicle that travels at speeds of at most 62 mph. Mach 5 was dropped under the wing a B-52 Bomber flying over the area Mojave Desert In Southern California. Pilot Scott Crossfield The aircraft reached an altitude 52,341 feet at its highest point and reached a maximum speed of 124 mph. Mach 2.11.
The Flight was initiated by a rigorous testing effort. Three X-15 aircraft flew 199 flights over the next nine-years. The program eventually surpassed performance targets and achieved what is still the nation’s the fastest piloted hypersonic flight at Mach 6.72, or 4,520 km per hour. Though it ended in 1968, discoveries from the program continue to inform the government’s hypersonic vehicle research.
In a 1964 report detailing the program’s accomplishments, NASA researcher Wendell Stillwell wrote: “As long as Earth’s atmosphere exists, wherever men fly that fast, they will be traveling in a region whose secrets the X-15 was first to probe.”
More Half a century later, the X-15 remains the best. Defense Department’s most rigorous hypersonic testing endeavor — a testament to the program’s success, but also a result of periods of restrained investment in high-speed vehicle research. Whereas The 1960s saw an average of one X-15 airborne test per 18 days. Today, the department supports around a dozen hypersonic flights in a good year.
Despite The U.S. considered operational hypersonic technology a future capability from its early technological breakthroughs and has debated its place in the military arsenal. In In the meantime, China Russia Recent years have seen significant advancements in the field of hypersonic systems.
Those DoD is seeing an increase in the urgency to develop hypersonic weapons and boost funding for enabling technology. The Pentagon According to estimates by the, the US will spend $15 billion on hypersonic programmes between 2015-2024 in 70 different initiatives. Government Accountability Office. Its Fiscal 2023 budget was $4.7 billion for hypersonic weapon technology and $225.5million for hypersonic defence.
As The strategy includes a part. Principal Director For Hypersonics Mike White Would like to restore the old testing rigor. The more programs test, he told C4ISRNET, the more they learn and the faster they’ll deliver.
“We really want to open the aperture to allow the national team to learn at the pace of discovery and not at a pace limited by the availability of flight-test range windows,” He said this in an interview.
Last year, White The defense testing community was presented with a challenge Increase The hypersonic test frequency is limited to one flight per day. The target sounds ambitious, but that’s the point, he said. While the shift won’t happen overnight, the hope is that setting a stretch goal will push the enterprise to change the way it operates.
“The goal of one test per week was established to drive us toward a paradigm shift with respect to how and where we test, versus trying to just do more of what we’re doing,” White said. “To get there will take some time, but we are already well on our way.”
Focused Flight test
Over DoD made some clear moves over the past year toward improving its hypersonic testing capabilities. They also moved toward a more regular flight-test pace.
Those Initiatives include a Defense Innovation Unit Program called Hypersonic High-Cadence Airborne Testing CapabilitiesThe company is using commercial technology to create a test plane that could fly in the next 2 years.
The Test Resource Management Center — a Pentagon-level office that supports test events and infrastructure across the department — also partnered with the Navy To develop the Multi-Service Hypersonics Test BedThis will make it easier to demonstrate, and validate hypersonic technology. And TRMC made significant progress in expanding its SkyRange program. This program is currently converting 24 decommissioned buildings. Global Hawk Drones for hypersonic testing
Along The department is expanding its access to hypersonic test ranges with the help of these new programs. According To the Congressional Research ServiceDoD has 11 open air ranges that can be used for test flights. White DoD said it is working with industry and international allies in order to increase this number.
The department also increased its investment in its well-resourced test infrastructure. In Get a report Congress This year, the Pentagon Funding gap of $5.7 billion was identified for lab and test infrastructure. This includes $817 million in unfunded hypersonic military construction projects.
While TRMC’s annual funding request doesn’t clearly identify hypersonic testing budgets for security reasons, director George Rumford C4ISRNET was informed that the organization prioritizes funding for this work.
To illustrate this, he pointed to a section of TRMC’s budget that identifies testing resources for strategic technologies like artificial intelligence, cyber and hypersonics. In fiscal 2018, the department’s five-year forecast predicted TRMC would need just $470 million to support strategic technology testing in fiscal 2022. TRMC’s actual fiscal 2022 funding came in around $1.5 billion, more than three times what it forecast. That Includes funding for ground testing infrastructure like wind tunnels and laboratories to support hypersonic development.
That growth wasn’t accidental, Rumford It was part of an effort to increase testing support in key technology areas.
“Within the last five years, the department has made a strategic plan to triple the amount of investment in test infrastructure to accelerate the national defense strategy,” He said. “Hypersonics is the big player in that.”
According To WhiteThese focused initiatives and investments are beginning to pay off. In JulyThree U.S. hypersonic programs successfully tested the technology: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Operational Fires missile and its Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept The Air Force’s Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW. Over A period of approximately three months between November The end of JanuaryHe said that seven flight tests are planned by the department.
As ARRW’s first flight test of its full prototype (or all-up round) was part of the recent series of tests. Dec. 9 in Southern California. The Test extended the streak of successful flights for this program, which had suffered three failures in succession in 2021.
White According to him, performance has improved across several hypersonic programs over the past year. This is due to increased system engineering rigor by the companies that develop those weapons.
“We have experienced a dramatic turnaround in our flight-test results,” He said.
Making The right investments
Former DoD officials and industry analysts say that while the department’s testing ambitions may be within reach, it needs to invest in the right areas.
Mark LewisDirector of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technology Institute and an expert in hypersonic capability development, told C4ISRNET he’s optimistic DoD can reach its testing targets — and its history on the X-15 is evidence of that.
“We can, because we have in the past,” He said. “But if you’re going to test at that pace, you need to do it differently than the way we’ve been doing it so far in many of our hypersonics programs.”
Lewis Has served in many roles within the Pentagon’s research and development and science and technology community, including director of defense research and engineering for modernization and Air Force chief scientist – positions that included oversight of hypersonic development efforts. He said he’s encouraged by TRMC’s investments, but thinks the department needs to put a greater emphasis on recoverability and creating more realistic testing opportunities.
On recoverability, Lewis While it would be ideal to have the whole system retrieved after the test, collecting individual parts of a vehicle can provide data analysis benefits.
“I might want to test new high-temperature materials. If I can put them on the outside of the vehicle [and] if I can get that vehicle back, I can take them off. I can look at them. I can see how they survive,” He said. “Otherwise, I’m just relying on sensors and instrumentation.”
Realistic flight testing — or as Lewis It is called ” “wind tunnels in the sky” — should also be a priority for the department. While ground-based wind tunnels that replicate the in-flight environment are an important part of a program’s test plan, they have limitations.
“Wind tunnels are always making some compromise,” He said. “The very fact that you’re in a tunnel and your model is sitting in a chamber and that chamber has walls — that’s different than a vehicle that’s flying out in the atmosphere.”
Lewis White both noted that developing a more robust modeling and simulation infrastructure will lessen risk, but that it’s not a replacement for flight testing.
“The more you can test on the ground, the more you reduce risk for flight testing, but there is no facility that can fully simulate hypersonic flight,” White said. “So, we must fly.”
Roman SchweizerAn analyst at the defense research firm, Cowen Group, said that while a “build and test and fail quickly” model is important if the department wants to move fast, frequency also comes with a cost — and there needs to be a push to reduce that even as the testing cadence picks up.
“You need to keep cost as a function of that,” He spoke to C4ISRNET. “Whenever anyone has introduced new technology, but particularly the military, there’s just a lot of trial and error that goes into it. And if the trial and error are super expensive, you’re not going to be able to do a lot of it.”
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