Agreed. HyFly would have been what you described. It had a dual-combustion ramjet (operates as a ramjet up to scramjet ignition speed.)
Three attempts. Three failures, then they gave up. Never even got to test the engine.
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Chinese Hypersonic Developments (HGVs/HCMs)
- Thread starter A.Man
- Start date
Three attempts. Three failures, then they gave up. Never even got to test the engine.
That’s what you get when there’s no real demands, like Netfire and FCS, a strange period of time indeed, won’t happen in the next few decades I think
ARRW is certainly looking to keep the tradition alive. And we never found out what happened to RATTLRS. So many programs that seem like no-brainers and "nope, why would we need that?"
Or their demand shifted to higher speed, more versatile, air breathing waveriding/gliding HCMs. Is it the HAWC program or ARRW program that aims for this? One of the two aims at developing a "modular" family of high tier hypersonics - >Mach 15, longer ranged, air breathing, and gliding/waveriding.
It's just that China's beat them to achieving and fielding these sorts. The global ranged flight just took even the US intelligence with surprise and hence a bit of a louder military personnel reaction and broadcasted a little more publicly than previous Chinese hypersonic flights ... that was until Milley said China has performed hundreds of hypersonic flights over the decade.
The thing is the Americans have at least equal funding access, talent pool, infrastructure and equipment, to catch up and maybe even surpass. It becomes an organisational issue and one of resolve. The more these public figures begin talking up the threats the more willing they are to grant funding. China cannot stop with innovating new A2AD forms and cannot limit themselves to the mechanical and kinetic weapons if they want to continue holding up conventional deterrence. The aim is to catch up to USN levels of sophistication and numbers eventually so that the deterrence can be in sheer firepower and peer capability in those domains. In the meantime, these A2AD must hold strong until PLAN and PLAAF can catch up to deter US politicians from going in for a conventional kinetic fight. At the moment, PLAN and PLAAF with equal (or superior) capability platforms are simply far too few and its force projection even to first island chain without land based support is underwhelming in comparison to the force the USN can bring.
What kind of numbers are you thinking? Like how many destroyers, submarines, AC, and LHD/LPD's are you talking about that will satisfy you vision of some kind of "parity"?
Basically equal to USN pacific fleet and JMSDF combined in counter force of conventional A2AD (not HGVs, ASBMs, HCMs, and whatever else China has/developing). This doesn't mean 1:1 and same capability and modernity but a direct counter e.g. for every two anti-ship ordinance an available F-35 can launch, there can be two LR missiles for the F-35, four MR missiles for intercepting ordinance, and for example 2 HQ-10 missiles and 1000 rounds and maybe 5 seconds of fire time for Type 730/1130. Rather than simply having one J-35 with more or less exactly equal ability to do the same against a US fleet.
This stuff is near impossible to determine accurately and I'm not suggesting that but PLAN and PLAAF are very far from achieving numerical parity here even if tech parity or superiority in some platforms are achieved e.g. Burke flight II compared to Type 055 and SM-6 compared to the latest HHQ-9. The gaps in numbers for surface fleet, carriers, fighter wing are too low and sub warfare is quite unknown. On submarines themselves, Type 093 even improved ones are nowhere near the current gen US SSNs. Type 039A is only comparable to Japanese diesel electrics. 096 will close the gap but the numbers gap is huge.
A2AD weapons like ASBMs, HGVs, HCMs etc are what hold the US back. Of course China's current naval capability is very strong close to its coast with land based support and USN operating in this area is really stretched thin. Their aim is to create a 6th gen aircraft that enhances operational range several times the distance of F-18 and F-35 so their carriers can remain well outside of Chinese A2AD land based weapons. China is countering with putting into service, ship borne ASBM, HGV, and HCM. This is an arms race struggle of engagement range. Until China's navy and airforce is built up to the numbers of at least the entire USN pacific fleet, a great portion of the deterrence fall onto the shoulders of the PLARF firing hypersonics and anti ship ballistic missiles. Being able to do this via air and ship is a great additional boost though. When PLAN and PLAAF get to those numbers of in service highest tier platforms, the deterrence can be relied on that alone. Even if PLAN trade 3 for 1 equivalents, that's a huge part of USN gone and tens of thousands of lives lost for USN and more than enough political deterrence.
I should add that LR SAM for F-35 doesn't mean engaging it at the extent of its range but basically being able to carry more energy to improve its interception probability at far closer ranges. Let's say tracking and launching missile at F-35 can be done at range 100km, this would give a 200km ranged missile a lot of energy at 100km away from launch site. F-35s have stand off weapons of range well beyond 100km though so of course the only hope of engaging F-35s would be at longer ranges otherwise at least these missiles can be used in defence of ships against anti-ship missiles. All assumes detection tracking and fire control are all working effectively at range.
The only counter PLAN has against this are the dedicated A2AD weapons mentioned and maybe subsurface capabilities. Surface ships can extend the range of A2AD and are all sensor nodes but they lack the range to directly engage USN carrier groups because aircraft outrange PLAN surface ships' "conventional" anti ship weapons coordinated wave attacks. Throwing handfuls of YJ-18s cannot be assumed to do much except expend USN interceptors.
Therefore the long term deterrence to achieve is force parity because there are always going to be counters to latest weapons no matter how impressive they are when they are new. A peer force in conjunction with world leading A2AD is going to be ideal and enough for a Taiwan scenario. Only one of those may not be enough to discourage US involvement in any Taiwan scenario. Right now China only has the A2AD side and building up the conventional force.
A really important aspect of this struggle is putting into service a force of PLAN carrier fighters that can counter and contest with the F-35s.
These are all long term goals which A2AD is helping out with by patching up the difference in force.
The only counter PLAN has against this are the dedicated A2AD weapons mentioned and maybe subsurface capabilities. Surface ships can extend the range of A2AD and are all sensor nodes but they lack the range to directly engage USN carrier groups because aircraft outrange PLAN surface ships' "conventional" anti ship weapons coordinated wave attacks. Throwing handfuls of YJ-18s cannot be assumed to do much except expend USN interceptors.
Therefore the long term deterrence to achieve is force parity because there are always going to be counters to latest weapons no matter how impressive they are when they are new. A peer force in conjunction with world leading A2AD is going to be ideal and enough for a Taiwan scenario. Only one of those may not be enough to discourage US involvement in any Taiwan scenario. Right now China only has the A2AD side and building up the conventional force.
A really important aspect of this struggle is putting into service a force of PLAN carrier fighters that can counter and contest with the F-35s.
These are all long term goals which A2AD is helping out with by patching up the difference in force.
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ARRW was the glider (I say "was" because it's effectively dead. They're giving up on it without ever testing the glider.) HAWC is a scramjet. "HAWC" is a DARPA program that is supposed to lead to a production item. Both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have flown scramjet test vehicles under this program. LM's was the recent March test.
Neither program would have come anywhere near even Mach 10 let alone above Mach 15.
Yeah, that's where the US is cripplingly behind. "Risk" is a 4-letter word that strikes terror into anybody near the pursestrings in the US. That's how you get three failures on HyFly and then they quit without ever seeing if the damn thing actually works. Same is happening to ARRW. It's had three failure, none of which has even got to the booster firing, and now they've zeroed out the funding for it. I think it gets one more attempt but then, regardless of outcome, there is no money. Compare SpaceX 's Starship to NASA's SLS. Same thing.
Didn't a US test recently achieve Mach 15 or over? And one of the programs aims for >Mach 20 top speeds.
Doesn't AGM-183 fall under the ARRW program umbrella?
I recall the US expressing doubt in how effective hypersonic weapons are due to exorbitant costs. They haven't planned on cancelling projects due to costs but it's an interesting comment on this class of weapons. Seemingly suggesting they haven't worked out how to control the costs from getting crazy and making the weapon essentially near useless except as a doomsday nuclear delivery system which I recall being something one of the articles claimed is how they expect China to operate hypersonics - as nuclear delivery only because it is simply too expensive to use conventionally.
I'd argue it's because these weapons are not exactly anywhere near as useful to the US as it is to China. A result of the military postures and doctrine of the two with China being in a defensive position and requiring A2AD, also making expensive forms of A2AD worthwhile. Meanwhile the US wants power projection and hypersonics aren't exactly any more effective than any other PGM. Their aim is control of air and sea so that airborne assets can use PGMs - considerably cheaper and easier to make than hypersonics. However it's very difficult to use a PGM to sink a carrier and even a hypersonic at 10x the cost or 100x the cost of a PGM is well worth it if it is able to perform this role.
So their "lack of trying" is more down to these reasons.
And come on, yeah US funding isn't infinite but it is as close to being effectively unlimited as any other. Over 4% of GDP (the largest GDP sum mind you) compared to China's not even 2% GDP spent on military. Okay lots of bases to maintain and higher pay for pretty much everyone. That's still at least similar available funding. It's just they don't see anywhere near as much value as China does and this is down to the military posture of the two.