Samples of hypersonic weapons systems, which will reach Mach 6-8, should appear before the end of 2020. Boris Obnosov, General Director of the Tactical Missile Armament Corporation, announced this the other day.
- These are new prohibitive speeds. Hypersound starts at Mach 4, 5. One Mach is 300 m / s, or 1,000 km / h. To create such weapons systems that gain speed in the atmosphere in excess of Mach 4.5 is a huge scientific and technical task. Moreover, we are talking about a fairly long flight in the atmosphere. On ballistic missiles, this hypersonic speed is achieved for a short time, Obnosov noted, adding that manned hypersonic flights are an issue that will be resolved between 2030 and 2040.
And here the question of a race in the field of high-speed non-nuclear weapons immediately arises. For example, on November 21, in the supplement to Nezavisimaya Gazeta - NVO - an article was published "A New High-Speed Arms Race" by James Acton, Co-Director of the Nuclear Policy Program and Senior Researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The expert believes that lately there are clear signs of the maturing of a new race of ultra-high-speed long-range weapons, which may turn out to be very dangerous. Thus, in August, the United States and China tested a gliding missile weapon with an interval of 18 days. As for Russia, the military-political leadership has also repeatedly made statements about the development of hypersonic weapons.
- The most serious threat is the use of non-nuclear gliding weapons during the conflict. This is fraught with a new risk of its escalation to the point of becoming nuclear,”writes Acton.
Note that work on the creation of hypersonic cruise missiles, aircraft and guided warheads in the world has been going on for a very long time, but has not yet left the category of experimental developments. Russian anti-aircraft guided missiles S-300 and S-400 fly at hypersound, but not for long, as well as warheads of ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) at the time of entry into the dense layers of the atmosphere.
The United States is working on several promising "hypersonic" projects at once: the AHW (Advanced Hypersonic Weapon) gliding bomb (development is being conducted under the auspices of the US Army), the Falcon HTV-2 unmanned hypersonic vehicles (since 2003, developed by the US Department of Defense Agency for Advanced Defense Scientific -research development (DARPA)) and X-43 (built under the NASA "Hyper-X" program), the Boeing X-51 hypersonic cruise missile (developed by a consortium that includes the US Air Force, Boeing, DARPA, etc.) and a number of other programs …
The most promising of them is the Boeing X-51 rocket (it is said that it will enter service in 2017). So, in May 2013, it was launched from a B-52 aircraft at an altitude of 15,200 meters and then, with the help of an accelerator, rose to an altitude of 18,200 meters. During the flight, which lasted for six minutes, the X-51A rocket developed a speed of Mach 5.1 and, having flown a distance of 426 kilometers, self-destructed.
China is also active in the "hypersonic" sphere. In addition to the so far unsuccessful tests of the WU-14 hypersonic glider (apparently partially copied from the X-43 experimental hypersonic unmanned aerial vehicle), the Celestial Empire is developing a reactive hypersonic cruise missile.
As for Russia, in August 2011, Boris Obnosov reported that his concern was starting to develop a rocket capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 12-13. There is reason to believe that it was an anti-ship missile, which was "spotted" in the press under the name "Zircon". However, given the successful tests of the American X-51A, Russian developers in the future need to present not one complex, but a whole line of hypersonic strike systems.
Moreover, a good start was made in the Soviet Union. So, since the end of the 50s, the Tupolev Design Bureau has been working on the creation of a hypersonic aircraft launched by a carrier rocket - Tu-130. It was assumed that it would fly at a speed of Mach 8-10 for a distance of up to four thousand kilometers. But in 1960, all work, despite obvious successes, was curtailed. Interestingly, the American HGB, a prototype of the American AHW hypersonic system, looks very similar to the Soviet Tu-130. As for domestic developments in the field of hypersonic missiles, they have been actively pursued in the USSR since the 1970s, but practically disappeared in the 1990s. In particular, NPO Mashinostroyenia created the Meteorite rocket, and later began work on an apparatus with the code 4202; MKB "Raduga" in the 1980s launched the X-90 / GELA project; in the 1970s, the Kholod rocket was created on the basis of the S-200 missile.
Military expert Viktor Myasnikov notes: a hypersonic missile is necessary for an instant preemptive and disarming strike so that the enemy cannot react to the attack.
- A rocket flying at a speed of 10-15 Machs will be able to reach any point on the planet in a few tens of minutes, and no one will have time to fix and intercept it properly. In this case, it is possible to do without the "nuclear filling", since missiles with conventional explosives are already guaranteed to disable the enemy's communication and control centers. Therefore, the Americans are pouring huge amounts of money into their projects AHW, Falcon HTV-2 and X-51A, in a hurry to complete them as soon as possible in order to control the whole world and dictate their will to it.
But at the moment we can talk about a technology race, but not about a hypersonic arms race, because such weapons do not yet exist. For it to appear, the leading powers will have to solve a lot of problems, in particular, how to "teach" a rocket or apparatus to fly in the atmosphere, where there are still insurmountable factors - environmental resistance and heating. Yes, today missiles, which are already being put into service, reach speeds of Mach 3-5, but at a fairly short distance. And this is not the hypersound that is meant when they talk about hypersonic weapons.
In principle, the technological path of the development of high-speed weapons in all countries is the same, because physics, as you know, does not depend on geography and social order. The key point here is who will overcome technological and scientific difficulties faster, who will create new resistant materials, high-energy fuel, etc., that is, a lot depends on the talent and originality of the developers' ideas.
So, this is a systemic question, since the creation of such weapons requires the development of scientific, technical and technological sectors, which is quite expensive. And the longer this process takes, the more expensive it will cost the budget. And in our research institutes they are used to working slowly: there are topics that a scientist is ready to develop for years, while the army and industry require prompt solutions. Abroad, in this regard, everything is moving much faster, because there is competition: whoever managed to patent the development faster, made a profit. For us, the issue of profit is not the key one, since money will be allocated from the budget anyway …
Whether Russia will be able to create hypersonic weapons with our well-known problems in the defense industry after the 90s is a big question. In the USSR, the development of hypersonic missiles was carried out, but after the collapse of the Union, the further development of such weapons took place at the level of development of individual systems.
We have been living for a long time in the conditions of the use of hypersonic warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles: their nuclear blocks in the passive section are moving at a speed of 7-8 Machs, says the editor-in-chief of the Arsenal Otechestvo magazine, a member of the Expert Council of the Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Government of the Russian Federation, Viktor Murakhovsky …
- So, we will not see anything fundamentally new in the next decade. We will only see new technical solutions that will allow the withdrawal of non-ballistic missile assets using hypersonic sound. And for missile defense systems that some countries have or are prospectively being developed, in fact, there is no difference what kind of target goes on hypersound - a warhead or an aircraft.
"SP": - SAM S-400 "Triumph" is capable of working on hypersonic targets …
- And even the S-300VM Antey-2500, however, for short- and medium-range missiles. And the S-400 and S-500 are generally considered theater missile defense (theater of operations - SP ), as well as the American Aegis system.
The United States, of course, is not concerned with the topic of hypersonic weapons in the sense of improving nuclear weapons - they are not going to develop their strategic forces too seriously, but in terms of implementing the concept of a rapid global strike. And here it is unprofitable to use ICBMs in non-nuclear equipment, since the enemy's missile defense will still equate missiles with nuclear ones, therefore the States are betting on aerodynamic systems.
There are prototypes, tests are underway, but I will not dare to say that a hypersonic cruise missile or a hypersonic aircraft will appear in service with the largest powers in 5-10 years. So, talk about electrochemical and electromagnetic guns has been going on for about 15 years, but so far - all the way.
As for the high-speed arms race, in my opinion, it is not that it has begun, it has not stopped. Yes, the United States and Russia signed in 1987 the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (from 500 to 5500 km - "SP"), but I do not think that hypersonic missiles and aerodynamic vehicles will be equipped with nuclear warheads, because ICBM technology has been developed for decades, and it shows high reliability in test launches.
