Over the millennia, mankind has developed a rule according to which, in order to survive and defeat the enemy, weapons must be more accurate, faster and more powerful than those of the enemy. Aviation weapons meet these requirements in modern conditions. Currently, abroad, guided airborne weapons (UASP), in particular, guided air bombs (UAB), the caliber of which lies in a wide range - from 9 to 13600 kg, are intensively developing: they are equipped with new types of guidance and control systems, effective combat parts, methods of combat use are being improved. UAB are an indispensable accessory of modern strike aircraft complexes (UAK) for tactical and strategic purposes. Despite the high level of efficiency of modern UAB models, they, being part of the UAK, do not always meet the requirements for fulfilling promising combat missions. As a rule, UAK operate near the front line, while all the efficiency is lost.
Local wars of recent decades, and primarily military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, have revealed the insufficient efficiency of conventional precision weapons, including UAB. When performing a combat mission, too much time passes from the moment the target is detected and the decision to attack is made until it is defeated. For example, a B-2 Spirit bomber, taking off from an airfield in the United States, must fly 12-15 hours to the target's attack area. Therefore, in modern conditions, weapons of rapid response and high-precision action are required at a great distance, reaching tens of thousands of kilometers.
One of the directions of research on the fulfillment of these requirements abroad is the creation of a new generation of hypersonic shock systems. Work on the creation of hypersonic aircraft (LA) (missiles) and kinetic weapons capable of high-precision target destruction are being carried out in the USA, Great Britain, France and Germany.
The study of foreign experience for us is extremely important, since in front of the domestic defense-industrial complex (MIC), as D. Rogozin noted in his article "Russia needs a smart defense industry" (Newspaper "Krasnaya Zvezda". 2012. - February 7. - С 3) the task was set "to regain the world technological leadership in the field of arms production in the shortest possible time." As noted in the article by V. V. Putin "To be strong: guarantees of national security for Russia" (Newspaper "Rossiyskaya Gazeta". - 2012. - No. 5708 (35). - February 20. - pp. 1-3) "The task of the coming decade is to ensure that the new structure The Armed Forces was able to rely on a fundamentally new technology. The technique that "sees" further, shoots more accurately, reacts faster than similar systems of any potential enemy."
To achieve this, it is necessary to thoroughly know the state, trends and main directions of work abroad. Of course, our specialists have always tried to fulfill this condition when performing R&D. But in today's environment, when “the military-industrial complex does not have the opportunity to calmly catch up with someone, we must make a breakthrough, become leading inventors and manufacturers … To respond to the threats and challenges of today only means to condemn ourselves to the eternal role of laggards. We must by all means ensure technical, technological, organizational superiority over any potential enemy”(From an article by V. V. Putin).
It is believed that the first creation of hypersonic aircraft was proposed in the 1930s in Germany by Professor Eigen Senger and engineer Irene Bredt. It was proposed to create an aircraft horizontally launched on a rocket catapult, under the action of rocket engines accelerating to a speed of about 5900 m / s, making a transcontinental flight with a range of 5-7 thousand km along a ricocheting trajectory with a payload of up to 10 tons and making an aircraft landing at a distance of more than 20 thousand km from the starting point.
Considering the development of rocketry in the 1930s, engineer S. Korolev and pilot-observer E. Burche (S. Korolev, E. Burche Rocket in the war // Tekhnika-youth. - 1935. - No. 5. - P. 57-59) proposed a scheme for the use of a rocket combat aircraft-stratoplane: “Going to bombing, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the accuracy of hits from heights measured in tens of kilometers and at tremendous speeds of the stratoplane should be negligible. But on the other hand, it is quite possible and of great importance is the approach to the target in the stratosphere outside the reach of ground weapons, rapid descent, bombing from normal altitudes that provide the required accuracy, and then lightning-fast ascent again to an unattainable height.
The concept of a global strike based on hypersonic weapons
Currently, this idea is starting to be practically implemented. In the United States in the mid-1990s, the concept of Global Reach - Global Power was formulated. In accordance with it, the United States should have the ability to strike at ground and surface targets anywhere in the world within 1-2 hours after receiving an order, without using foreign military bases using conventional weapons, for example, UAB. This can be done using a new hypersonic weapon, consisting of a hypersonic carrier platform and an autonomous aircraft with a combat load, in particular UAB. The main properties of such weapons are high speed, long range, sufficiently high maneuverability, low visibility and high operational efficiency.
Within the framework of the large-scale program of the US Armed Forces Promt Global Strike ("Rapid Global Strike"), which allows to strike with conventional (non-nuclear) weapons of kinetic action at any point of the planet within one hour, and carried out in the interests of the US Army, a new generation hypersonic strike system is being developed in two options:
• the first, called AHW (Advanced Hypersonic Weapon), uses a disposable launch vehicle as a supersonic platform, followed by a launch to the target of a supersonic aircraft AHW (hypersonic gliding aircraft can also be called a maneuvering warhead) equipped with guided aerial bombs to hit the target;
• the second, called the FALCON HCV-2 hypersonic strike strike system, uses a hypersonic aircraft to create conditions for the launch of an autonomous hypersonic gliding aircraft CAV, which flies to the target and destroys it using the UAB.
The first variant of the technical solution has a significant drawback, which is that the carrier rocket delivering a hypersonic projectile to the AHW launch point can be mistaken for a missile with a nuclear warhead.
In 2003, the Air Force and the Advanced Development Administration (DARPA) of the US Department of Defense, based on their own developments and industry proposals for advanced hypersonic systems, developed a new concept for a promising hypersonic strike system called FALCON (Force Application and Launch from Continental US launch from the continental United States ") or" Falcon ". According to this concept, the FALCON strike system consists of a hypersonic reusable (for example, unmanned) aircraft carrier HCV (Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle - an aircraft flying at altitudes of about 40-60 km with a hypersonic cruising speed, with a combat load of up to 5400 kg and a range of 15 -17000 km) and a reusable hypersonic highly maneuverable controlled airframe CAV (Common Aero Vehicle - unified autonomous aircraft) with an aerodynamic quality of 3-5. The HCV vehicles are supposed to be based at airfields with a runway up to 3 km long.
Lockheed-Martin was chosen as the lead developer of the HCV hypersonic strike apparatus and the CAV delivery vehicle for the FALCON strike system. In 2005, she started work on determining their technical appearance and assessing the technological feasibility of projects. The largest US aerospace firms - Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Andrews Space - are also involved in the work. Due to the high level of technological risk of the program, conceptual studies of several variants of experimental samples of delivery vehicles and their carriers were carried out with an assessment of the characteristics of maneuverability and controllability.
When dropped from a carrier at hypersonic speed, it can deliver various combat loads with a maximum weight of 500 kg to a target at a distance of up to 16,000 km. The device is supposed to be made according to a promising aerodynamic scheme that provides high aerodynamic quality. To retarget the device in flight and defeat targets identified within a radius of up to 5400 km, its equipment is supposed to include equipment for real-time data exchange with various reconnaissance systems and control points. The defeat of stationary highly protected (buried) targets will be ensured by the use of means of destruction of a caliber of 500 kg with a penetrating warhead. Accuracy (circular probable deviation) should be about 3 m at a target speed of up to 1200 m / s.
The CAV hypersonic gliding aircraft with aerodynamic controls has a mass of about 900 kg, of which the carrier aircraft can carry up to six, carries two conventional aerial bombs weighing 226 kg each in its combat compartment. The accuracy of using bombs is very high - 3 meters. The range of the actual CAV can be about 5000 km. In fig. 2 shows a diagram of the separation of penetrating lesions using inflatable shells.
The scheme of the combat use of the FALCON hypersonic strike system looks like the following. After receiving the task, the HCV hypersonic bomber takes off from a conventional airfield and, using a combined propulsion system (DP), accelerates to a speed approximately corresponding to M = 6. When this speed is reached, the propulsion system switches to the mode of a hypersonic ramjet engine, accelerating the aircraft to M = 10 and an altitude of at least 40 km. At a given moment, the CAV hypersonic gliding aircraft separates from the carrier aircraft, which, after completing a combat mission to defeat targets, return to the airfield of one of the US overseas air bases (if the CAV is equipped with its own engine and the necessary fuel supply, it can return to the continental United States) (fig. 3).
There are two types of flight paths possible. The first type characterizes a wavy trajectory for a hypersonic aircraft, which was proposed by the German engineer Eigen Zenger in the bomber project during the Second World War. The meaning of the wavy trajectory is as follows. Due to acceleration, the device leaves the atmosphere and turns off the engine, saving fuel. Then, under the influence of gravity, the plane returns to the atmosphere and again turns on the engine (for a short time, only for 20-40 s), which again throws the device into space. Such a trajectory, in addition to increasing the range, also contributes to the cooling of the bomber's structure when it is in space. The flight altitude does not exceed 60 km, and the wave step is about 400 km. The second type of trajectory has a classic straight-line flight path.
Experimental research on the creation of hypersonic weapons
Hypersonic models HTV (Hypersonic Test Vehicle) with a mass of about 900 kg and a length of up to 5 m were proposed to assess their flight performance, controllability and thermal loads at speeds of M = 10 - HTV-1, HTV-2, HTV-3.
The HTV-1 apparatus with a controlled flight duration of 800 s at a speed of M = 10 was withdrawn from testing due to the technological complexity in the manufacture of the heat-shielding body and incorrect design solutions (Fig. 4).
The HTV-2 apparatus is made according to an integrated circuit with sharp leading edges and provides a quality of 3, 5-4, which, as the developers believe, will provide a given gliding range, as well as maneuverability and controllability using aerodynamic shields for targeting with the required accuracy (fig. 5). According to the US Congress Research Service (CRS), the FALCON HTV-2 hypersonic device is capable of hitting targets at ranges up to 27,000 km and speeds up to Mach 20 (23,000 km / h).
The HTV-3 is a scale model of the HCV hypersonic strike aircraft with aerodynamic quality of 4-5 (Fig. 6). The model is designed to evaluate the adopted technological and design solutions, aerodynamic and flight performance, as well as maneuverability and controllability in the interests of further development of the HCV aircraft. Flight tests were supposed to be carried out in 2009. The total cost of work on the manufacture of the model and the conduct of flight tests is estimated at $ 50 million.
The tests of the shock complex were supposed to be carried out in 2008-2009. using launch vehicles. The scheme of the test flight of the hypersonic aircraft HTV-2 is shown in Fig. 7.
As the studies have shown, the main problematic issues for creating a hypersonic aircraft will be associated with the development of the power plant, the choice of fuel and structural materials, aerodynamics and flight dynamics, and the control system.
The choice of the aerodynamic layout and the aircraft design should be based on the condition of ensuring the joint operation of the air intake, power plant and other aircraft elements. At hypersonic speeds, the issues of studying the effectiveness of aerodynamic controls, with minimal areas of stabilizing and control surfaces, hinge moments, especially when approaching the target area at a speed of about 1600 m / s, become paramount, first of all, to ensure the strength of the structure and high-precision guidance to goal.
According to preliminary studies, the temperature on the surface of the hypersonic vehicle reaches 1900 ° C, while for the normal functioning of the on-board equipment, the temperature inside the compartment should not exceed 70 ° C. Therefore, the body of the device must have a heat-resistant shell made of high-temperature materials and multilayer thermal protection based on existing currently of constructional materials.
The hypersonic device is equipped with a combined inertial-satellite control system and, in the future, with an end-to-end optical-electronic or radar-type homing system.
To ensure straight-line flight, the most promising for military systems are ramjet engines: SPVRD (supersonic ramjet engine) and scramjet engine (hypersonic ramjet engine). They are simple in design, since they have practically no moving parts (except for the fuel supply pump) using conventional hydrocarbon fuels.
The aerodynamic layout and design of the CAV apparatus are being worked out within the framework of the X-41 project, and the carrier aircraft - under the X-51 program. The purpose of the X-51A program is to demonstrate the possibilities of creating a scramjet engine, the development of heat-resistant materials, the integration of the airframe and the engine, as well as other technologies necessary for flight in the range of 4, 5-6, 5 M. As part of this program, work is also underway to create a ballistic missile with a conventional warhead, a hypersonic missile X-51A Waverider and an orbital drone X-37B.
According to CRS, funding for the program in 2011 was $ 239.9 million, of which $ 69 million was spent on AHW.
The US Defense Ministry conducted another test of a new gliding hypersonic bomb AHW (Advanced Hypersonic Weapon). The test of the ammunition took place on November 17, 2011. The main purpose of the test was to test the ammunition for maneuverability, controllability and resistance to high temperature effects. It is known that AHW was launched into the upper atmosphere using a booster rocket launched from an air base in Hawaii (Fig. 9). After separating the ammunition from the missile, he planned and hit a target in the Marshall Islands near Kwajalein Atoll, located four thousand kilometers southwest of Hawaii, at a hypersonic speed of five times the speed of sound. The flight lasted less than 30 minutes.
According to Pentagon spokesman Melinda Morgan, the purpose of testing the ammunition was to collect data on the aerodynamics of the AHW, its handling and resistance to high temperatures.
The last tests of the HTV-2 took place in mid-August 2011 and were unsuccessful (Fig. 10).
According to experts, it is possible to adopt a new generation first-generation shock hypersonic system by 2015. It is considered necessary to provide up to 16 launches per day using a single-use launch vehicle. The launch cost is about $ 5 million.
The creation of a full-scale strike system is expected no earlier than 2025-2030.
The idea of the military use of a rocket-powered stratoplane aircraft proposed by S. Korolev and E. Burche in the 1930s, judging by the research carried out in the United States, is beginning to be implemented in projects to create a new generation of hypersonic strike weapons.
The use of UAB as part of a hypersonic autonomous vehicle when attacking a target makes high demands on ensuring high-precision guidance under conditions of hypersonic flight and thermal protection of the equipment from the effects of kinetic heating.
On the example of the work carried out in the United States to create hypersonic weapons, we see that the possibilities for the combat use of the UAB are far from exhausted and they are determined not only by the tactical and technical characteristics of the UAB itself, which provides the given range, accuracy and probability of destruction, but also by means of delivery. In addition, the implementation of this project can also solve the peaceful task of promptly delivering cargo or rescue equipment in distress to any part of the world.
The presented material makes us seriously think about the content of the main directions of development of domestic guided strike systems until 2020-2030. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the statement of D. Rogozin (Rogozin D. Work on the exact algorithm // National Defense. - 2012. - No. 2. - P. 34-406): “… we must abandon the idea of“catching up and overtaking”… And it is unlikely that we will quickly gather strength and capabilities that would allow us to catch up with high-tech countries at incredible speeds. This does not need to be done. We need something else, much more complicated … It is necessary to calculate the course of conducting an armed struggle with the prospect of up to 30 years, to determine this point, to reach it. To understand what we need, that is, to prepare weapons not for tomorrow or even the day after tomorrow, but for a historic week ahead … I repeat, do not think about what they are doing in the USA, France, Germany, think about what they will have it in 30 years. And you must create something that will be better than they have now. Don't follow them, try to understand where everything is going, and then we will win."
That is, it is necessary to understand whether such a task has arisen for us, and if yes, then how to solve it.
