Hypersonic weapons - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

US in Hypersonic Weapon ‘Arms Race’ With China -Air Force Secretary

Newsmax — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 23:49:21 +0000

The United States and China are engaged in an arms race to develop the most lethal hypersonic weapons, the U.S. Air Force secretary said on Tuesday, as Beijing and Washington build and test more and more of the high-speed next-generation arms.

“There is an arms race, not necessarily for increased numbers, but for increased quality,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Reuters during an interview in his Pentagon offices. “It’s an arms race that has been going on for quite some time. The Chinese have been at it very aggressively.”

In October, the top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, confirmed a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing’s pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses.

This year the Pentagon has held several hypersonic weapons tests with mixed success. In October, the Navy successfully tested a booster rocket motor that would be used to power a launch vehicle carrying a hypersonic weapon aloft.

Hypersonic weapons travel in the upper atmosphere at speeds of more than five times the speed of sound, or about 6,200 kilometers (3,853 miles) per hour.

Kendall noted that while the U.S. military has focused funds on Iraq and Afghanistan, it has taken its eye off the ball in terms of hypersonic weapons. “This isn’t saying we’ve done nothing, but we haven’t done enough,” he said.

As the Pentagon enters the 2023 annual budget cycle, Kendall hopes to raise funds with the retirement of older and expensive-to-maintain systems in favor of new systems, including hypersonic development programs.

“I love the A-10. The C-130 is a great aircraft that’s been very capable and very effective for a lot of missions. The MQ-9s have been very effective for counterterrorism and so on. They’re still useful, but none of these things scare China,” Kendall said, referring to a more than 40-year-old combat aircraft, a plane for carrying cargo, and widely used drones, respectively.

Defense contractors hope to capitalize on the shift to hypersonic weapons not only by building them, but also by developing new detection and defeat mechanisms.

Arms makers Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp and Raytheon Technologies Corp have all touted their hypersonic weapons programs to investors as world focus shifted to the new arms race for an emerging class of weapon.

Still, the Pentagon wants defense contractors to cut the ultimate cost of hypersonic weapons, the head of research and development has said, as the next generation of super-fast missiles being developed currently costs tens of millions per unit.

Source: https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/arms/2021/11/30/id/1046785/

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Putin Makes a Startling Claim: Russia Is the World’s Leader in Hypersonic Weapons

Mark Episkopos — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 13:26:16 +0000

U.S. Air Force General: “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at a Defense Ministry meeting held earlier this week that Russia leads the world in hypersonic weapons technology. What are these new Russian weapons, and precisely what type of threat do they pose to the U.S.?

In his March 1, 2018, annual state-of-the-nation address, President Putin unveiled a slew of hypersonic nuclear-capable weapons: the Kinzhal missile system, Sarmat ICBM, and the Avangard boost-glide vehicle.

Kh-47M2 Kinzhal is an air-launched, nuclear-capable ballistic missile with a reported maximum effective range of up to 3,000 km when deployed on the Tu-22M3 bomber or its Tu-22M3M successor with a top-flight speed of up to Mach 12 or just under 15,000 kph. Kinzhal, which entered service in the Russian armed forces last year, was test-launched from an MiG-31K fighter at a speed of Mach 10 in the Arctic region earlier this December.

As previously described by The National Interest, Avangard is a hypersonic boost-glide missile system that combines a high-performance ballistic missile with an unmanned glider vehicle. The result, claims the Kremlin, is a missile so fast and agile that it cannot be reliably intercepted. Russian state news outlet TASS reports that the first two serial Avangard systems entered a service trial period in late 2019.

Sarmat, or “Satan 2,” is a 200-ton, Mach 10, liquid-fuelled intercontinental ballistic missile that was introduced by Putin as a “heavy ICBM” with “practically unlimited range.” In the same speech, Putin alleged that Sarmat is wholly immune to interception by “any current or prospective” air defense system. Sarmat has suffered a series of delays from 2015 to 2017 stemming from design flaws with the ejection mechanism. Earlier this month, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed previous reports that Sarmat is scheduled to finish state trials by 2021 and enter service in 2024.

A common sentiment emerges in the way that Russian defense commentators, up to and including the Kremlin, speak about these new weapons. President Putin put it best: from the postwar race to the atomic bomb to the Gorbachev-Reagan arms control talks, that Cold War was characterized by the Soviet attempt to catch up to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. “Now,” said Putin, “we have a situation that is unique in modern history when they are trying to catch up to us. No [other] country has hypersonic weapons, let alone hypersonic weapons of intercontinental range.”

So, where does this leave the United States? In the short term, at a clear strategic disadvantage. Independent experts, including those at the National Defense Strategy Commission (NDSC), have raised concerns that the U.S. military is trailing Russia and China in the development of hypersonic delivery systems. When asked about the U.S. capacity to intercept an Avanguard-launched missile, US Air Force General John E. Hyten, the Commander of US Strategic Command point-blankly told Congress “we don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”

Earlier in 2019, the Pentagon awarded a contract to Dynetics Technical Solutions to manufacture a set of hypersonic glide body prototypes. But the fruits of those efforts are several years away, with the first units expected no sooner than 2023.

Russian defense experts close to the Kremin are focused less on the first-strike potential of hypersonic missiles, and more on their value as a guaranteed second-strike weapon. A recent report by political scientists Dmitry Suslov and Sergei Kuraganov frames hypersonic weapons as a potential source of nuclear stability, in that they provide the Kremlin with a 10-15 year window of guaranteed nuclear deterrence without the need to engage in a costly, unsustainable buildup of conventional nuclear arms.

Mark Episkopos is a frequent contributor to The National Interest and serves as a research assistant at the Center for the National Interest. Mark is also a PhD student in History at American University.

Image: Wikicommons.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/putin-makes-startling-claim-russia-worlds-leader-hypersonic-weapons-108986

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Germany Is Now Building Hypersonic Weapons

Michael Peck - The National Interest — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 07:27:21 +0000

What does that mean for NATO? Russia?

Add Germany to the ranks of the Hypersonic Missile Club.

The German military has begun hypersonic weapons, according to a European defense contractor.

The new missiles are a response “to threats of the concrete kind: keyword Putin’s missiles or even the new Russian tank,” Peter Heilmeier, sales manager for defense firm MBDA, told the German newspaper Die Welt.

BAIINBw, the German defense procurement agency last year, began the hypersonic missile program in 2018, according to Heilmeier. He expects the first prototypes to be launched in three years.

Heilmeier describes the new weapons as being “purely defensive.” He foresees the first German hypersonic missiles as being anti-tank weapons to stop Russian armor, such as the new T-14 Armata, equipped with active protection systems (APS). Mounted on armored vehicles, APS such as Israel’s Trophy and Russia’s Afghanit use radar and other sensors to detect incoming anti-tank missiles, which are then destroyed by a salvo of shotgun-like pellets.

The idea is to be “so fast with guided missiles that the protective systems of the Russian tank become too slow,” Heilmeier said. A missile is considered hypersonic when it travels faster than Mach 5: the U.S. and British navies, for example, fear that hypersonic anti-ship missiles travel too fast to be shot down by shipboard anti-missile defenses.

Interestingly, given the push by the French and German governments to create a pan-European military to replace the multitude of national armies, Germany is keeping this a strictly German project.

Germany is already developing weapons to stop a new generation of advanced Russian missiles. Moscow has boasted of having a suite of hypersonic weapons, including the Khinzal ballistic missile, the Zircon anti-ship missile, and the Avangard hypersonic nuclear-armed glider.

These Russian weapons have yet to be tested in combat. Nonetheless, “MBDA Germany boss Thomas Gottschild, who also belongs to the board of the European MBDA group, spoke of new threats to which politicians, the military and thus the armaments industry had to adapt to,” Die Welt noted. “Thus, the planned new air defense system for the German Armed Forces, the TLVS, designed as a successor to the recent Patriot missiles for new scenarios. Following delays in the billion-dollar project, a joint venture of MBDA and Lockheed Martin now plans to submit a concrete offer by the end of June.”

Heilmeier believes hypersonic interceptors could be integrated into the German air defense system. “Because such a project would be too huge for Germany, a ‘future European hypersonic missile’ could then be developed on a broader level,” said Die Welt.

It would be surprising if Germany didn’t develop hypersonic missiles in light of Russia’s more aggressive posture in Europe, such as the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s military support for secessionists in Eastern Ukraine.

Perhaps more importantly, with America, Russia, and China developing or deploying hypersonic missiles, standards for weaponry are changing. The next tier of military powers—Britain, France, Israel, Japan—will feel the need to develop their own hypersonic weapons both to stay abreast of military technology and for export revenue. Indeed, the French government announced Project V-MaX (Experimental Maneuvering Vehicle), which aims to develop a Mach 5 hypersonic glide vehicle by 2021.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and facebook.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/germany-now-building-hypersonic-weapons-61652

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