An experimental hypersonic strike apparatus launched by the American military reached a speed of Mach 20 - and disappeared.
The development of such systems is carried out within the extremely ambitious - and, of course, highly secret - the Pentagon's Prompt Global Strike program. In short, its task is to be able to hit a target anywhere in the world with a delay of no more than an hour. Well, we already talked about the project in more detail in the article "Thunder from a Clear Sky".
One of the elements of the program is the Falcon hypersonic aircraft, which, as a result, should be able to reach colossal speeds and fly in lower space, covering thousands of kilometers in a matter of minutes. On April 22, the first flight tests of one Falcon HTV-2 spacecraft took place.
Launched aboard a carrier rocket from the California Air Force Base, the HTV-2 was supposed to rise above the atmosphere and, maneuvering, descend, gaining an astonishing speed of Mach 20. This is no longer just hypersound, but the so-called fast hypersound, the speed is close to 30 thousand km / h. Aircraft capable of flying at this speed require ceramic heat-shielding tiles. The wings are incapable of carrying them, they will not withstand, and the decision, it is considered, must necessarily be solved according to the aerodynamic scheme "Bearing body". This is exactly how the HTV-2 is believed to look, but it is not known exactly: only drawings of the appearance of the device have been made public, and no photographs.
So, starting from California, HTV-2, after only 30 minutes, was supposed to hit the Pacific Ocean, north of the Air Force and Navy base on Kwajalein Atoll. But instead of that the autonomous navigation system, stuffed with sophisticated electronics, assembled from the strongest heat-resistant composites, the device disappeared 9 minutes after the start of the flight.
The developers and the military who controlled the tests lost contact with him, and what caused this is still completely unclear. However, they declare that the first flight cannot be called completely unsuccessful. At least, HTV-2 successfully lifted on the carrier, safely detached from it and even managed to carry out a number of maneuvers in the air, "switching to a controlled flight in the atmosphere at a speed of more than Mach 20."
However, this event will not be a serious blow for the Prompt Global Strike program itself. To achieve this goal, as many as 3 families of different technological solutions are being developed in parallel.
The first is to re-equip existing ICBMs with conventional weapons instead of nuclear ones. True, this option, according to experts, is fraught with an unpredictable reaction from other nuclear powers: having fixed the launch of such a missile, one cannot be sure what kind of charge it carries.
The second group of solutions consists in creating not too long-range cruise missiles capable of reaching speeds of Mach 5-6, and deploying them at bases around the world (a prototype of one of them, the X-51 Waverider, is to be tested in December this year).
Finally, the third option is the development of vehicles like the HTV-2, suitable for deployment directly in the continental United States - and from there, within one hour, reach anywhere in the world. No one will confuse them with a nuclear strike with a trajectory reaching near space, with appropriate velocities. Unless such devices themselves are equipped with nuclear warheads. So far, fortunately, this is far from it.
