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Need for speed
Richard Stone
Richard Stone is senior science editor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Tangled Bank Studios in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Science 10 Jan 2020:
Vol. 367, Issue 6474, pp. 134-138
DOI: 10.1126/science.367.6474.134
Despite hype and technological hurdles, a hypersonic arms race is accelerating.
Bullet-shaped interceptors defend the United States against attacking hypersonic weapons in an artist's concept. Such defenses remain hypothetical.
ILLUSTRATION: DARPA
High in the sky over northwestern China, a wedge-shaped unmanned vehicle separated from a rocket. Coasting along at up to Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound, the Xingkong-2 “waverider” hypersonic cruise missile (HCM) bobbed and weaved through the stratosphere, surfing on its own shock waves. At least that's how the weapon's developer, the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, described the August 2018 test. (China did not release any video footage.) The HCM's speed and maneuverability, crowed the Communist Party's Global Times, would enable the new weapon to “break through any current generation anti-missile defense system.”
For decades, the U.S. military—and its adversaries—have coveted missiles that travel at hypersonic speed, generally defined as Mach 5 or greater. Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) meet that definition when they re-enter the atmosphere from space. But because they arc along a predictable ballistic path, like a bullet, they lack the element of surprise. In contrast, hypersonic weapons such as China's waverider maneuver aerodynamically, enabling them to dodge defenses and keep an adversary guessing about the target.
....
Need for speed | Science
Richard Stone
Richard Stone is senior science editor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Tangled Bank Studios in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Science 10 Jan 2020:
Vol. 367, Issue 6474, pp. 134-138
DOI: 10.1126/science.367.6474.134
Despite hype and technological hurdles, a hypersonic arms race is accelerating.
ILLUSTRATION: DARPA
High in the sky over northwestern China, a wedge-shaped unmanned vehicle separated from a rocket. Coasting along at up to Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound, the Xingkong-2 “waverider” hypersonic cruise missile (HCM) bobbed and weaved through the stratosphere, surfing on its own shock waves. At least that's how the weapon's developer, the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, described the August 2018 test. (China did not release any video footage.) The HCM's speed and maneuverability, crowed the Communist Party's Global Times, would enable the new weapon to “break through any current generation anti-missile defense system.”
For decades, the U.S. military—and its adversaries—have coveted missiles that travel at hypersonic speed, generally defined as Mach 5 or greater. Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) meet that definition when they re-enter the atmosphere from space. But because they arc along a predictable ballistic path, like a bullet, they lack the element of surprise. In contrast, hypersonic weapons such as China's waverider maneuver aerodynamically, enabling them to dodge defenses and keep an adversary guessing about the target.
....
Need for speed | Science