US Air Force test to launch ultra-fast hypersonic missile fails

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: CNN

The US Air Force's new hypersonic missile program suffered a blow Monday after it failed to launch from a B-52H Stratofortress bomber aircraft flying from Edwards Air Force Base in California.

"B-52H Stratofortress took off Monday over the Point Mugu Sea Range intending to fire the first booster test vehicle for the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) program. Instead, the test missile was not able to complete its launch sequence and was safely retained on the aircraft which returned to Edwards AFB," the Air Force said in a statement.

"The ARRW program has been pushing boundaries since its inception and taking calculated risks to move this important capability forward. While not launching was disappointing, the recent test provided invaluable information to learn from and continue ahead. This is why we test," said Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, the armament directorate program's executive officer.

Hypersonic missiles are designed to travel at a such a high speed that they can fly great distances and move quickly through heavily defended airspace to attack targets such as harbors, airfields and other installations before they can be successfully shot down.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-air-force-test-to-launch-ultra-fast-hypersonic-missile-fails/ar-BB1fmdz6?li=BBnb7Kz

[zipplewrath]

1. hypersonics is hard

They'll assuredly have more failures than successes early on.

[Miguelito Loveless]

2. One more destabilzing weapon

If hypersonic missiles are deployed, you can scrap pretty much all major surface ships including carriers.

[EX500rider]

7. Since China & Russia are already developing them, we'd be foolish not to. nt

[Miguelito Loveless]

10. We should be adding them to the list of weapons

to NOT deploy.

Again, weapons of this sort have the punch of small nukes because of their incredible velocity. However, as they are not nuclear, once developed, all countries will get them. We'll sell them to the Saudis, Israel and Taiwan. Russia will sell them to Iran and North Korea.

If built, they will be used. Once used, escalation will occur.

Example: US tries to intimidate some country (Iran for example) with a carrier task force. Ten minutes later, all of the surface ships are a debris field on the ocean's floor. How will we respond?

[EX500rider]

13. They hit hard but nothing like nukes not even comparable

... and with Russia and China developing them the US should be stupid not to.

[Miguelito Loveless]

17. A .22 round and .223 round

do massively different amounts of damage. Yes, the .223 has more mass, but it’s the tripling of the muzzle velocity that causes massive hydrostatic shock that can turn a human into meatloaf.

[lagomorph777]

6. Yeah, this is going to take a LONG time. Very cutting-edge.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Rocket scientists with budgets is what got us into this mess

How much did this fail cost taxpayers?

[oldsoftie]

4. Not as much as NOT developing them.

China & Russia are developing them. NOT keeping up with the two worst actors guarantees disaster in the future. Same with space.

[lapfog_1]

14. as we used to say in the aeronautics

side of NASA... "rocket science is easy, aeronautics is hard".

i.e. it's not that a rocket propels it, it is that it flies through the air"

[TomWilm]

5. Hypersonic Missiles More Easily Detected Than Current Weapons Systems

U.S. Won’t Get Return on Multi-Billion Dollar Investment in Hypersonics and May End Up Less Secure. A scientific study finds that hypersonic missiles will not offer the United States significant new military capabilities because they are slower and more susceptible to detection than the country’s existing ballistic missile systems.

The study refutes widespread claims about the speed and detectability of hypersonic missiles. Using computational modeling, the study finds that hypersonic gliders deliver weapons more slowly than ballistic missiles during intercontinental flights due to drag effects and can be detected by space-based infrared sensors because they remain hot throughout the duration of their atmospheric flight. In addition, their ability to maneuver is more limited than typically claimed.

“Hypersonic missiles are not the revolutionary technology they’re claimed to be,” said Dr. Cameron Tracy, co-author of the research study and Kendall Fellow for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “The United States is spending vast sums of money on these new weapons that will perform worse, in many ways, than the ballistic missiles we already have.”

https://www.ucsusa.org/about/news/study-says-hypersonic-missiles-slower-and-more-easily-detected-current-weapons-systems

[zipplewrath]

8. Strange Study

They seem to be comparing hypersonic weapons with ballistic missiles. Any hypersonic weapons to which I was exposed were for missions/targets that were not in the ballistic missile profile. For one thing, the warheads were vastly smaller. The ranges tended to be shorter as well. And generally they were intended to be launched from mobile platforms.

[EX500rider]

9. Yeah I agree, apples to oranges or strategic to tactical

[Miguelito Loveless]

12. A sub-launched

hyper-sonic missile launched from 100 miles out will destroy a major city (like DC) in less than a minute. Because of the the incredible velocity, the kinetic energy is staggering, the effect on par with a small nuke. Now imagine multiple missiles launched at the same target. Imagine multiple missiles at multiple major cities, say DC, Norfolk, Baltimore, NYC, Boston.

You don't have to be terribly accurate with a weapon that can level a square kilometer.

[EX500rider]

15. Unless it has a nuclear warhead it will do no where near that kind of damage.

Super high speed or not the missile won't mass enough to do widespread damage and won't be able to carry a massive warhead.
Now as high speed anti-ship missiles they will do enough local damage to knock out or sink most ships.

[Miguelito Loveless]

16. A hypersonic missile

striking a refinery, tank farm, gas farm, chemical plant, or major pipeline juncture will do a HUGE amount of damage. Also, dams, nuclear reactors, peaker plants, trains yards, large buildings (twin towers were destroyed by subsonic aircraft). Imagine what a hypersonic boom would do to the glass of skyscrapers in a busy downtown. Imagine one at a Superbowl. How would human bodies cope with the shockwaves generated by a Mach 6 missile striking a stadium?

[EX500rider]

18. Any normal bomb striking those types of soft targets will do enormous damage.

The Germans already used hypersonic missiles in WWII, the V-2 missile hit around mach 5 which is hypersonic territory, and they didn't do that much damage other then the occasional lucky strike on a movie theater or the like as the high speed meant they buried themselves in the ground before the warhead went off, suppressing blast radius. And the sonic boom didn't do any damage I can find and modern buildings have tougher glass then back then.

Also hypersonic missiles hit their top speed and then after the propellant burns off they start dropping in speed for the rest of the journey.


https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/military/hypersonic-missiles-are-being-hyped

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket

[ffr]

11. Fail is not really accurate. It simply had an error code the prevented a safe lauch.

Go to Hell, CNN! You both sides do it infomercial!