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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."
another hypersonic bomber
Perhaps it's time to get the SR-71 out of mothballs.
Despite being ancient and retired, it still seems to be the best thing going.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Glad someone else is stepping up to the plate. Development on such equipment could easily lead to civilian hypersonic aircraft, getting rid of 15 hour flights to Australia and such. Also sparks research on better ways of space travel, as the scramjet is closer to being space capable than a traditional jet engine.
sudo make me a sandwich
"doesn't seem particularly realistic"?
Huh? Sun Tzu: Never underestimate your opponent
With the Military Industrial Complex as The Winner. Gotta insure that nothing stops the river of cash flowing into "defense" (on either side.)
XB-70 Valkyrie on our side, and the Soviets had something along those lines as well.
Then surface-to-air missiles showed up, and it became clear no bomber could hope to outrun them, so we went with low-observable and/or terrain-following tech. Remember, it's easier to make a missile capable of X speed (just a motor, a warhead, and fuel for one quick interception) than a bomber flying X speed (many warheads, release mechanism, crew, and fuel to carry all that stuff a thousand miles), so you need a massive technological edge to win.
So... does Russia really think they can make hypersonic bombers, but some enemy that's worth using them on can't make even faster hypersonic SAMs?
You know, because a dictatorial kleptocracy with no political ideology to speak of and which is ranked #53 in per capita GDP needs to defend itself against brave young women in punk bands with these.
>> Wouldn't you rather play a nice game of chess?
No. Let's play thermonuclear war.
>> Fine.
Given that the ISS is ~360 km from the Earth, and it has a 92 minute orbital period, it seems that bombs could be lifted into space, then launched from there. With sufficient supplies and advanced notice you could get enough stuff in position over the long term and deploy in minutes 4500mph = 2km/s and therefore could be at the surface in 180 seconds (3 minutes) once launched. Then there's the issue of changing orbit, which lets assume takes 1 orbit. So you can stike anywhere in the wold in 95 minutes. Can you fuel, prep and deploy a plane in that time? I think not.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Why do you want a million dollars?
The real issue is: Will the Russian government be willing (and able!) to sink the billions of dollars worth of rubles into this project over the 20 or so years it will need? The 2020 date is crazy, this is a new frontier, 20 years is more likely, and only if there is full an continued support from the government.
I read the internet for the articles.
...that they're still a world power. That means building a lot of expensive, useless weapons, because that's what world powers do. Ah, for the good old days, when you could just round up the slaves and put up a pyramid!
Russia Wants a Hypersonic Bomber
What a coincidence! I happen to be selling one on Craigslist right now.
I want a million dollars so I can buy the best oats for my pony.
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.
Maybe they'll be funding computer hacking/espionage methods instead of scramjet or hypersonic airplane development- that way, they'll have a hypersonic bomber (plans, at least) soon after we do, at a fraction of the development costs.
Or maybe they'll just think they have the plans.
Of course, that timeline depends on them discovering alien technology in 2019 and not destroying it until 2020.
Please, don't do it with rounded wings, not sure how much it will cost to build it, but the lawsuit could be in the order of billons of dollars.
Early 1970s technology, 0 to Mach 10 in 5 seconds, intercept at 30,000 meters in 15 seconds. There is just no way a modern hypersonic jet could outrun even that 40 year-old tech.
As long as the money is siphoned off to cronies then yes the Russian government will be more than happy to sink billions of dollars worth of rubles into the project for 20 years or so, in fact they may be able to go for 40 years, but nothing is getting off the ground.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Manned hypersonic flight is a long ways off.
An 'unstart' on a hypersonic vehicle would decelerate ridiculously fast, potentially crushing the occupants (10's of G's). This is one reason why the US scramjet experiments have faced difficulties. The break even pressure ratio in the combustor is very difficult to achieve. If you aren't at a break even pressure ratio, you can't produce enough thrust to overcome drag; this means the vehicle begins slowing down (fast), making it even harder to achieve a break even combustor pressure ratio, etc. This failure happens in a matter of milliseconds: a sudden loss of thrust while travelling at speeds that generate fantastic amounts of drag, meaning fantastic deceleration follows.
For the Mercury capsules, for example, if the main engines were to suddenly stop at maximum pressure velocity, the entire structure would decelerate at nearly 15G's. If the capsule alone were to be released at that point, the loads would increase to cause the occupant to be unambiguously crushed from deceleration due to getting rid of the momentum of the rest of the rocket. The Mercury rockets included an escape tower that not only got the capsule away from a malfunctioning rocket, but provided thrust to allow the capsule to decelerate at survivable levels.
Unstarts with supersonic test planes and production planes have resulted in some injuries from the sudden loss of thrust at high speed.
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.
and I want a PONY!
no, wait, a UNICORN!
a well-hung unicorn.
You've got it backwards. America's only real enemy now is it's own paranoia. It is the one sinking "billions upon billions" into weapons and systems that they will probably never use. The rest of the world (Russians, Iranians, random terrorists, whatever) only has to keep promoting semi-plausible "threats" that cause more spending and the inevitable bankruptcy that will follow.
A strategy that worked great for America in the Cold War and is now working against them.
No, not really. They were softened up nicely in 1941-43, but by the end of 45 were pretty much fully recovered as far as war capacity was concerned. In fact, the USSR was in a better shape by then, because it had all its heavy industry restored and running at full capacity, but this time tucked away safely at Urals, where no German (or American) bomber could have reached. 10 million in casualties sounds pretty bad, and it was, but there were still considerable manpower reserves - we're talking about a country with a population of 170 million (as of 1946).
It also had officer corps that had learned through bitter experience on how to properly run massive defensive and offensive campaigns on land, something that US military didn't have because of the different nature of its conflict with Japan. Due to the geography of Soviet Union, any invasion against it would be focused primarily on land, with naval warfare not playing any considerable part in this equation. Coincidentally, this is also why Russia and USA would have a hard time taking at each other even today - one is a naval empire and the other is a continental one, so they're each strong at something that is precisely the wrong thing to use against their opponent: one has a massive land army, the other an overpowered navy.
Why is Snark Required?