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 HYPERSONIC

FULL SPEED AHEAD

There is hectic activity in a flight at an altitude of 25km at Mach 6. The
use of the technology will enable hypersonic
equipped with such an engine to cruise longer
the sphere of hypersonic and further.

weapons, and it is not Eager to have the capability to fight fire with
fire, the U.S. is also making speedy progress in its
limited to a few countries. work to produce and rapidly deploy hypersonic
weapons to front-line forces. The U.S. Army is
on track to field the Long-Range Hypersonic
- By Arun Sivasankaran
Weapon (LRHW), a ground-launched, boost-
glide missile system, by the end of fiscal year
ven as the world was waking up from its New Year revelries, 2023. The Pentagon is expected to test the
Russian state media reported that President Vladimir Putin LRHW missile twice more before initial deploy-
E had dispatched a modern warship armed with advanced ment.
hypersonic missiles on a trip through the Atlantic Ocean to the
Mediterranean Sea and into the Indian Ocean. It is easy to see why hypersonic weapons are
coveted by militaries; they can strike anywhere
According to Putin, the ship was carrying Zircon hypersonic cruise on the globe in less than an hour and thus can
missiles, which Russia had tested in late 2021 by firing the missile change the way wars are fought. Hypersonic
from Admiral Gorshkov in the White Sea to hit a naval target more missiles - which are ultra-fast like ballistic mis-
than 400 kilometers away. The news of the warship’s long trip came siles and maneuverable like cruise missiles - can
just days after Interfax news agency reported that the country had obliterate targets in a flash and are incredibly
test-fired around 10 new Zircon missiles from a frigate and two more hard to defend against in the absence of any
from a submarine. sonic booms. Aware that such an unstoppable
weapon provides them not only a major com-
In China, researchers have achieved a technological breakthrough petitive edge on the battlefield but also acts
that will help to significantly boost the operational range of hyper- as a powerful deterrent, most of the major mili-
sonic weapons. According to a paper published in the Journal of taries – including the United States, China, and
Solid Rocket Technology, in January, a team at National University India - have been working toward achieving
of Defence Technology has come up with a method to slow down the capability.
incoming fresh air to below the speed of sound before it enters a
hypersonic missile’s engine combustion chamber. A prototype engine
built by the research team, which had boron powder as the main The Fastest, By A Mile
fuel, achieved a fuel efficiency of almost 80 per cent by switching to Hypersonic missiles are those that travel above
a subsonic-combustion mode during a ground test that simulated 3,836 mph, or more than five times the speed
20 | MARCH 2023 WWW.GBP.COM.SG/ADT