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Russia Wants a Hypersonic Bomber
derekmead writes "Hot on the heels of the U.S. Air Force's most recent failed test of an unmanned hypersonic vehicle, Russia now says it wants to jump into the hypersonic game with a long-range bomber. Will Russia's newest Bear fly at 4,500 miles an hour? The Russian military sure hopes so. 'I think we need to go down the route of hypersonic technology and we are moving in that direction and are not falling behind the Americans,' Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Russian television. 'The question is will we copy the Americans' 40-year experience and create a [Northrop] B-2 analog or will we go down a new, ultramodern technology route, looking to the horizon, and create a machine able to penetrate air defenses and carry out a strike on any aggressor.' The Russians want their plane operational by 2020, which doesn't seem particularly realistic — we are talking about five times the speed of sound here, and Russia is just starting engine development. The U.S., meanwhile, has been investing in its Waverider program since 2004, and the last test of the X-51A scramjet-powered missile failed after just 15 seconds."
It's a way to get up the first few miles while accelerating to very high speed without needing as much fuel as a rocket. Once at high altitude a rocket propelled craft can detach and fire. Since it's already climbed a long way out of the earth's gravity well and is already at high speed it needs to carry much less fuel. That means it's far more efficient. Smaller rockets are required too, as it's not having to carry as much mass (fuel) to orbit.
It can't get you all the way to space, but it can get you half way there as a stage 1.
It can take off with full tanks, it just doesn't because it's single engine performance (needed to be considered incase you lose one on takeoff) is poor - they used to fly with full tanks from Kadena regularly, depending on the mission profile.
Also, there is plenty of room for weapons bays in the payload bays aft of the cockpit - that's where the YF-12A had its Aim-47A missiles stowed. Yup, there was an interceptor variant of the A-12/SR-71 tested.
It's still the wrong aircraft for the job, because it's been out of service for nearly two decades, and the jigs and tool sets have been destroyed for nearly twice that long.
The Russians are quite good at iterative design and have been for decades. They'll built a jet, make improvements, build another, make more improvements, and so on. The end result is they tend to have programs that operate at a fraction of the cost of the US analog. But what they have at 2020 won't be anywhere close to what the US has. It may never be anywhere close to the US as they have always had trouble with collecting the intellectual capital to compete with high paying US Defense contractors. In the past there wasn't enough incentive. Time will as they have had more privatization in the last decade.
The tanks leaking was not the reason for taking off with a low fuel load - see my post above.
In service, Concorde made plenty of profit for British Airways (no idea about Air France) and the clientele that flew on it loved it - it had a smooth, quiet ride and engine noise was not an issue for those in the cabin (the engines are set back toward the very end of the cabin and some distance from the fuselage, not to mention underneath a wing).
Propelling a train in a tube with air pressure would make the problem of drag worse, not better. Sure, it's better for the vehicle, but overall you have to cram your air mass through the tube, drastically increasing the surface area that is exposed to the high velocity air stream. That's not to say such a pneumatic tube scheme couldn't work for lower speed transports, just that it doesn't seem to be a feasible option for ultra high speed transport.
So with the Russians just starting on hypersonic engine design, looks to me like they are only 15 seconds behind the US :)
Or maybe not, according to wikipedia they were doing something 20+ years ago:
First working scramjet "GLL Holod" in world flies on 28 November 1991 reaching speed mach 5.8. However, the collapse of Soviet Union stopped the funding of the project.
After NASA's NASP program was cut, American scientists began to look at adopting available Russian technology as a less expensive alternative to developing hypersonic flight. On November 17, 1992, Russian scientists with some additional French support successfully launched a scramjet engine "Holod" in Kazakhstan6. From 1994 to 1998 NASA worked with the Russian Central Institute of Aviation Motors (CIAM) to test a dual-mode scramjet engine and transfer technology and experience to the West. Four tests took place, reaching Mach numbers of 5.5, 5.35, 5.8, and 6.5. The final test took place aboard a modified SA-5 surface to air missile launched from the Sary Shagan test range in the Republic of Kazakhstan on 12 February 1998. According to CIAM telemetry data, first ignition of the scramjet was unsuccessful, but after 10 seconds the engine was started and the experimental system flew 77s with good performance, up until the planned SA-5 missile self-destruction (according to NASA, no net thrust was achieved).
Some sources in the Russian military have said that a hypersonic (10-15M) maneuverable ICBM warhead was tested.
needs to defend itself against brave young women in punk bands with these
Haven't you heard? The so-called "brave young women" are agents provocateur on CIA payroll, with the goal of destabilizing the country and causing a revolution that would cause it to splinter, so that individual pieces can then be overrun by NATO and China to extract their precious natural resources, using local population as slaves. Don't you watch RT?
(also see this - and never underestimate the power of propaganda)
I remember reading that if you where to update the SR71 engines with modern alloys (rememberer that the SR71 is a 1960's era plane) that it was possible for them to reach around the Mach 6 range.. as the limiting factor in the fitted engines was their ability to withstand the heat they produced..
Now that would be something to see!
"Early 1990s studies of inlets of this type indicated that newer technology could allow for inlet speeds with a lower limit of Mach 6.[46]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
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