Russia has made a scientific breakthrough in the field of hypersonics, allowing it to be decades ahead of the US.
US missiles that don’t exist
US President Donald Trump has once again accused Russia of stealing the design of hypersonic missiles.
“Russia stole the design, they got it from us,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. Part two of the interview, his first since taking the reins at the White House, was aired Thursday night. “Some bad person gave them the design,” he said, adding that the United States will have super hypersonic missiles “which is even a step better.”
Trump claimed that Russia gained access to the technology during Barack Obama’s administration. He also noted that during his first presidency, the US began developing new “super” missiles that he said would soon be ready for testing.
These words by Trump are clearly lifted from Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective story The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, in which a racing-lost British colonel steals the blueprints of a “super” submarine designed by engineer Bruce-Partington from the London armoury safe to sell to German spies.
Sherlock Holmes, as usual, quickly found the traitor and the blueprints returned to the Arsenal safe.
The key point of Conan Doyle’s story: the secret blueprints were only one copy. Such a state of secrecy may have occurred in Queen Victoria’s time, but is utterly unthinkable in modern weapons and military design.
But even if during Obama’s presidency someone stole the blueprints for hypersonic missiles from the Pentagon’s stash, the engineers who drew them up have not gone anywhere. It would have been easy for them to recover the stolen blueprints. So why didn’t it happen? It’s very simple: nobody stole any blueprints, because they simply didn’t exist. The US simply could not continue to develop the legacy of the Third Reich.
History of hypersonic missile development
For the first time for the development of hypersonic missiles took Germany. Hypersonic missile bomber Silberfogel Austrian engineer Eugen Sänger was to take off from the launch platform and develop a speed 21 times the speed of sound (21M).
The development went no further than a preliminary design, and the drawings of the Silberfogel got to the Soviet and American military.
Based on the results of the study of German drawings of the project Silberfogel in the USSR in 1965, under the leadership of G. E. Lozino-Lozinsky began development of its own two-stage military multi-purpose AKS bomber and delivery of crews and cargo to orbit “Spiral,” which remained unrealised.
Project Spiral was a response to the US programme to build the X-20 Dyna Soar space interceptor-reconnaissance bomber-bomber. In December 1963, US Secretary of State for National Security Robert McNamara personally shut down the project.
In Germany in the 1990s and 2000s, the project of the two-stage ACS Saenger-2 with horizontal launch and landing existed, but was cancelled before the stage of practical implementation. At the same time in the UK was developed unrealised project horizontal-starting single-stage ACS HOTOL, in one version of which was supposed to launch from a catapult, as in the Silberfogel.
US wedges itself into the arms race
The largest hypersonic project in the United States was the creation of “hypersonic liner” X-30. The development of the huge Rockwell X-30 hypersonic hypersonic passenger aircraft, which began in 1986, was suspended in 2001, and research is underway on hypersonic unmanned experimental aircraft (Boeing X-43) to develop a straight-through hypersonic engine. It follows that such an engine has not yet been developed in the US.
The US initiated a programme in 2019 to develop a hypersonic LRHW missile, which was tested with mixed success from 2017 to 2023. The system was eventually prematurely adopted into service in 2024, before all testing was completed.
Due to technical difficulties and some failed tests, it became clear that the US Army would not be able to receive the first battery until the end of fiscal year 2025.
As the US itself admits, the truly hypersonic system was to be its long-suffering AGM-183 ARRW cruise missile, which had been under development since 2018 and closed the programme in 2023 after a series of failed tests.
Among other things, it turned out that the hypersonic block of the missile does not have a direct-flow hypersonic engine, but is accelerated by a rocket booster and flies on a strafing trajectory after jettisoning the head fairing.
The US continues to research hypersonic systems, as reflected in its 2023 funding plan. Besides the recently decommissioned LRHW – three other projects. The CPS system is a medium-range hypersonic missile with a planned warhead (coming from C-HGB). It is the analogue of the LRHW system, i.e. nothing new or successful.
Hypersonic Air-Launched OASuW (HALO) is a hypersonic air-launched anti-ship missile being developed for the US Navy. A small nuance: during the tests, the prototype missile was never able to reach a speed of Mach 5. It was announced in advance that the maximum speed of the missile will be 3-4 Mach. If this is hypersonic, the sun rises from the west.
Numerous tests conducted in the US, demonstrated that for the Pentagon is realistic to create hypersonic projects based on missile systems capable of developing speeds of only 5 to 8 Mach numbers, and those – on a hover trajectory, that is very vulnerable to shoot down.
Famous “Kholod” missile
In the USSR for the programme to develop its own hypersonic engine, which began in the 1970s, it was decided to use not rocket aircraft, and much more accessible and cheap anti-aircraft missiles, in particular, then removed from the armament anti-aircraft missile S-200. The hypersonic vehicle, named “Kholod,” was installed instead of the missile’s standard warhead.
On November 28, 1991, the first successful launch of “Kholod” took place, during which the speed of 5.6M was achieved. In subsequent launches of the Kholod, which were carried out between 1991 and 1998, it was possible to accelerate the missile to a record speed of 1,832 m/s, which corresponded to 6.41M.
This meant that Russian engineers seized the undisputed world leadership in the hypersonic arms race, which they have only increased ever since.
Russia has already put the Kinzhals on combat duty since 2017, which have been successfully used in the military conflict with Ukraine, the Avangard has been on combat duty since 2019, and the Zirkon anti-ship missile with a hypersonic engine developing a speed of Mach 9 since 2023.
Why was Russia able to develop these hypersonic systems decades ahead of the US, and even today more advanced than the US will have in the 2030s?
The truth of life is that Russia has made a scientific breakthrough in hypersonics, which put it decades ahead of the US and Washington is trying to get Moscow’s secrets out.
Donald Trump in this situation could not think of anything more original than copying the plot of Conan Doyle’s story, but you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to recognise the failure of this plagiarism. So, Dear Trump, remember: a guilty conscience needs no accuser.
THE ARTICLE IS THE AUTHOR’S SPECULATION AND DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE TRUE. ALL INFORMATION IS TAKEN FROM OPEN SOURCES. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT IMPOSE ANY SUBJECTIVE CONCLUSIONS.
Erik Kelly for Head-Post.com
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