Pentagon’s Mach 20 Glider Disappears, Whacking ‘Global Strike’ Plans
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By Noah Shachtman
- April 27, 2010 |
- 4:49 pm |
- Categories: DarpaWatch
In its first flight test. the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) was supposed to be rocket-launched from California to the edge of space. Then the HTV-2 would could screaming back into the atmosphere, maneuvering at twenty times times the speed of sound before landing north of the Kwajalein Atoll, 30 minutes later and 4100 nautical miles away. Thinly wedge-shaped for better lift, equipped with autonomous navigation for more precision, and made of carbon-carbon to withstand the assault of hypersonic flight, the hope was it could fly farther and more accurately at a lower angle of attack than other craft returning to Earth.
At least, that was the idea. Instead, nine minutes after launch, Darpa researchers lost contact with the HTV-2. They’re still trying to figure out why. The agency says the flight test wasn’t a total bust: The craft deployed from its rocket booster, performed some maneuvers in the air, and “achieved controlled flight within the atmosphere at over Mach 20,” Darpa spokesperson Johanna Jones says.
But it’s bad news for the Pentagon “prompt global strike” program — a burgeoning and hotly-debated effort to almost-instantly attack targets thousands of miles away. The Defense Department is pursuing three different families of technologies to accomplish the task. One is to re-arm nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. But that runs the risk of accidentally triggering a response from another atomic power, who might mistake it for a nuke. A second effort is to build shorter-range cruise missiles than can fly at five or six times the speed of sound; that effort hit some recent turbulence when flight tests for the X-51 Waverider, scheduled for December 2009, were pushed until May 2010. Something like an armed version of the HTV-2 is the third choice.
“There’s always a concern that a conventional warhead on an ICBM might be confused with a nuclear device - what can you do to prove otherwise?” Dr. Mark Lewis, the former chief scientist of the Air Force, tells Danger Room. ”With a high lift vehicle, your trajectory would be so different that no one would likely confuse it with something more sinister.”
Brian Weeden, a technology advisor for the Secure World Foundation, agrees. “This thing itself is not a weapon. But it’s designed to lead to a precision strike weapon,” he says.
But the first step is to figure out what went wrong over the Pacific. Darpa says its investigation is ongoing.
See Also:
- Obama Revives Rumsfeld’s Missile Scheme, Risks Nuke War
- How To: Risk World War III, and Blow Billions Doing It
- Mach 6 Cruise Missile, Ready for Prime Time?
- Air Force’s Zombie Bomber, Back from the Grave
- Ballistic Missiles vs. Al-Qaeda?
- Hit Anywhere on Earth with ICBMs, “Cans of Whup-Ass”
- $100 Million for Worldwide, Instant Strike Weapon
- Congress Shoots Down Hypersonic Plane
- It’s Not a Nuke, Vlad. We Promise!
Great, It’ll be collateral murder from US soil.
Again DARPA sucks and did a piss poor job of copying WW2 German designs by Sanger, Lippish or the Horton Bros. The Nazis had a Mach 10 Wind tunnel, why TF would they need it? Dipole Bomber?
If you can’t tell the difference between a terrorist and an undocumented worker on your own soil, what chance “half a world away”? Getting the explosives to a known point doesn’t seem to me to be the real problem.
”With a high lift vehicle, your trajectory would be so different that no one would likely confuse it with something more sinister.”
Making it the perfect delivery vehicle for a 1st-strike nuclear warhead once the kinks have been worked out. /eyeroll
What if we actually wanted to disguise a nuclear first strike? What if we called up the Russians and told them “please ignore the weather satellite we’re about to launch and the fact its headed to Moscow…”.
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They know the difference because they can see where its going. We know the difference when they launch because we’re also good at tracking things put in orbit. So unless a single bomb can end a war (it cant) and everyone’s slipping on their game (they aren’t) the chances of the ObamaBomb’s hypersonic dart being mistaken for a nuclear first strike are pretty much Zero.
Actually, an HTV-2 type vehicle would be a rather poor delivery system for a nuclear warhead. It really is best for a small payload requiring highly precise targeting. /slow head shake
Why not mention who the contractors were on this?
* Andrews Space Inc., Seattle, Wash.
* Boeing Co., St. Louis, Mo.
* Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Palmdale, Calif.
* Northrop Grumman Corp., Air Combat Systems, El Segundo, Calif. Northrop Grumman’s FALCON program team is led by its Integrated Systems sector, but includes significant roles for the company’s Mission Systems sector, Reston, Va., and Electronic Systems sector, Baltimore. The team also includes subcontractors Aerojet-General Corporation, Sacramento, Calif.; Space Works, Atlanta, Ga.; Textron Systems, Wilmington, Mass.; HITCO Carbon Composites, Gardena, Calif.; and Pratt & Whitney, East Hartford, Conn.
Why not have these guys build something more useful - like, say, spaceships for exploring the solar system or something?
Not for nothing, but depending upon the velocity, the maneuvers, and the telemetry, data on the vehicle’s disintegration isn’t a total loss.
At Mach 20 the loss of the vehicle would be less a debris cloud than a fuel air explosive wave front. Might even be an EMP event, too. There would definitely be a considerable release of energy in a very short time.
But, it’s not really my field of expertise.
@ ShaJ
Are you sure you aren’t confusing history with post-WWII revisionist Nazi-tech mythology?
@ikesolem
Probably because NASA has had effectively no budget for things like that for decades now. While theres still loads left in the defense funds.
The DoD already has a prompt global strike platform, the ARV Alien Reproduction Vehicle. It can fly faster and farther than this HTV-2, the DoD just doesn’t want to risk the ARV getting shot down or malfunctioning with our enemies getting their hands on it.
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@ ikesolem - Those companies have already built spaceships, the tech is still heavily classified though thanks to the military industrial complex coup that has taken place in this country.
Or it worked perfectly and was completely successful. But that’s not what they want you to know.
So many tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists in only 12 comments.
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Why aren’t we planting daisies and humming kumbaya while we explore space? Because we’re A) a super power, and everyone wants a piece of us in some form or fashion, and B) we’re weapons peddlers, that’s our business. You don’t have to like it, but you should acknowledge the reality of it.
ESTEEB - you need to start thinking of the U.S. as a “failed superpower” - that’s the military and economic reality. “Superpowers” had their day in the 20th century, just as colonial empires had their day in previous centuries.
You do realize that sooner or later, the vast network of foreign U.S. military bases will be shut down, don’t you? It’s an unsustainable economic drain - and the only (pathetic) excuse for them is the need to protect the global flow of oil - but don’t worry, renewable energy will make that concern obsolete.
@ ikesolem: You fail to account how many jobs and how much revenue is generated by our military industrial complex. While the programs it supports are not cost effective, they generate exportable goods (weapons) which are a sellable product, and create millions of jobs. I contend that this is a much more efficient expenditure of government funds than something like Universal Heathcare which will continue to bleed money with no product to offer to re-coup it’s waste.
@randomguy2010, No, look up Lippish, Horton and Sanger and see some of their designs in the Luft 46 website, when you plan for 1000 years and not 4 years you get some good results. But you could be right, it might have been the Space Aliens giving the Evil Nazis the Rockets, Jets, Super cannons, Forward swept wings and Winged bombers like the B2, ETC., ETC. Maybe the Aliens will visit you again tonight and explain everything to you. Have they probed you yet?
@rfrancis1980, It’s called the Tesla Disk/Orb/Cylinder and flys through the Ether and is powered by High Voltage from Tesla Coils and is Pitch Black Secret.
@ikesolem
I think voodoo got my point a little better; or maybe he made my point a little better.
Darpa accidently the whole universe?
And not one of you mentioned FarScape. A fuel air explosive wave front, with a EMP? What part of disapeared was of a less concern, temperal or spacial?
It’s called a Tesla Bell, and its electromagnetic, not high voltage. High voltage is just used to get the mhos needed to ride on the global polarity. This is why there is GPS, a compass doesn’t work in side a magnetic field.