In the United States, they are working on an aircraft that can fly at 20 times the speed of sound. Military theorists believe that the use of hypersonic technology in combat aircraft construction will be able to make a revolution, such as the technology "Stealth" did in its time. In addition to speeds greater than or equal to Mach 5, hypersonic aircraft will be capable of maneuvering with aerodynamic forces and gliding over a longer distance than conventional aircraft, as the gliding process becomes "dynamic". Active attempts to create full-fledged hypersonic aircraft have been made for almost 50 years (in the USSR it was the Spiral project), but so far no real success has been obtained in this direction.
Known for its generally futuristic projects, the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has already conducted two unsuccessful test flights of the HTV-2 unmanned aerial vehicle - Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle in the past and the year before last. Both times the drone made an "unplanned controlled descent into the ocean."
A hypersonic glider called HTV-2 - Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle, created and tested by the famous Lockheed Martin company under the auspices of the Pentagon's Office of Advanced Research Programs DARPA, was created in order to move in the upper atmosphere at a speed that would exceed the speed sound 20 times. The first tests of this device began on April 22, 2010 in the United States at Vanderberg Air Force Base, located in California. The Minotaur IV launch vehicle successfully brought the test vehicle to the design point, after which the hypersonic glider separated from the rocket and went on its own flight.
Soviet project hypersonic aircraft "Spiral"
During the test flight, the HTV-2 was to be controlled by an autopilot and perform a number of maneuvers, such as turns, rotations, and others. However, after 10 minutes from the start of the independent flight of this device, all ground tracking stations and control satellites first lost the telemetry signal from the HTV-2, and later on, communication with the aircraft was completely lost.
After the loss of communication, the device remained in the air for about half an hour, having covered a distance of 6,500 km during this time. Then the test subject Falcon HTV-2 fell into the sea and drowned. The reasons for the device's accident remained unclear. The accident with the Falcon HTV-2 aircraft jeopardized the second stage of tests, which were supposed to take place in 2011, but the tests still took place.
Oddly enough, the second Falcon HTV-2 aircraft, which was sent on the flight on August 11, 2011, repeated the fate of its predecessor, albeit with some differences. As in 2010, the launch was carried out from Vanderbeng Air Force Base. The vehicle was delivered to low-earth orbit without incident, after which it separated from the launch vehicle and began a high-speed descent to the earth's surface. At this time, the device was supposed to exceed the speed of sound 22 times. The total flight time was supposed to be about 30 minutes, during which time the device had to cover 6600 km from the point of separation from the Minotaur IV rocket.
HTV-2 - Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle
After the first unsuccessful tests in 2010, extensive research was carried out, which included studies of the shape of the apparatus in a wind tunnel. Upon completion of these tests, a number of changes were made to the design of the HTV-2 hypersonic airframe, which were designed to reduce the thermal load on the device body and flight stability. However, most likely, the measures taken were not enough. After a little over 9 minutes of independent flight, communication with the hypersonic apparatus was lost. As in the previous year, the device completed its flight in the same way as its predecessor.
Despite another setback, the DARPA agency tried to present everything that happened from a positive side. Agency Director Regina Dugan said that DARPA will learn from its mistakes and will not stop developing in this direction. Already the next tests, which DARPA organized on November 18, 2011, turned out to be more successful than the previous ones. Then the new planning hypersonic warhead AHW - Advanced Hypersonic Weapon or "Advanced hypersonic weapon" flew and in 30 minutes on a non-ballistic trajectory covered 3,500 km., Gliding to a design point located near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
At present, the Pentagon's Prospective Research Programs Directorate continues to work on the creation of hypersonic weapons and aircraft systems that can reach anywhere in the world in an hour of flight. Not so long ago, the agency announced the start of another project under the Integrated Hypersonics program. This program will build on the experiences and results of all previous tests and studies. Within the framework of this project, it is planned to create a hypersonic X-plane - HX hypersonic aircraft, which should be prepared for testing in 2016.
HTV-2 - Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle
In a press release titled "Hypersonics - The New Stealth", DARPA announced that the new hypersonic flight will be the technology that will revolutionize the "game-changer" in aviation that has been shaped over the years. the last decades. At the same time, the description of the Integrated Hypersonics program and the press release issued by DARPA contain an insignificant amount of technical data related to the promising HX aircraft. But even in these documents, one can pay attention to the phrases: "a rocket engine, the use of which will help to ensure high maneuverability during hypersonic flights," "a self-healing structure of the next generation."
Such scant information provided leaves a large number of questions unanswered, especially if we take into account the not very positive experience that the Americans have already received, trying to implement the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2) project. It should be noted that the technical implementation of the Hypersonic X-plane - HX project will face even more difficulties, primarily technical, than the implementation of HTV-2 projects. The main difficulty lies in the fact that any aircraft that moves in the air at a speed of about 24 thousand km / h is exposed to the strongest thermal effect. The surface temperature of the device can reach 2000 degrees Celsius.
At present, after a not-so-successful series of tests, DARPA's plans for a new HX hypersonic aircraft seem quite fantastic, and it will still be a long time before the HX can fly into the field at 20 times the speed of sound. … In order to move on to the first stage of the Integrated Hypersonics program, the Agency for Advanced Defense Scientific and Technical Development plans to hold a press conference on August 14, 2012, at which some details about the technical component of the project will be announced. Also within the framework of the conference, it is planned to hear speeches from representatives of leading manufacturers of space technology, who will share their options for developing a new hypersonic aircraft.
