Rise Of Hypersonic Technology
Hypersonic technology is leading to the making of the modern hypersonic glide vehicle rockets capable of traveling at extreme speeds presumably from Mach 2- and above.
The publication made by Mathew Greenwood on September 7 at engineering, reported how the world’s leading technological countries are making progress in the making of hypersonic air vehicles.
Russia, U.S., and China were the top three mentioned in the making hypersonic vehicles. While Pentagon believes the U.S. is 5-10 years backward in comparison with others, a video was released online claiming to be a test of a hypersonic weapon made in Russia.
The benefit such extreme-speed technology can offer goes beyond just making of weapons. Rather than launching a satellite, special emergency rescue, and space visitations are among the numerous areas hypersonic can help the engineers do more in exploiting every aspect of science.
Though lots of concepts for hypersonic vehicles had been existing especially those released by DARPA, there is clear evidence that some advanced nations are already making air vehicles capable of traveling at hypersonic speed.
When it comes to the military advantage, hypersonic missiles capable of traveling at a speed up to Mach 5 which is about 1 mile per second had been made.
Mathew’s publication emphasized the extremity of such speed by comparing it with commercial passenger jets known to fly slower than Mach 1 and the modern fighter jets that travel at Mach 2 and Mach 3.
When hypersonic technology is for making weapons like missiles, could possibly launch an attack that could reach its target in as little time as 6 minutes distance flight. When coupled with the maneuverable ability, such weapon can keep their target in a ‘blind notice’ until the last few seconds.
The experimental hypersonic technology vehicle called HTV-2 is a crewless hypersonic glide vehicle rocket glider developed as part of the DARPA Falcon Project is said to have the capacity of flying at Mach 17.53 which is 21,000km/h such speed makes it possible to reach any area in the world within an hour.
The use of hypersonic weapons has created concern in some countries and most of them are now embarking on anti-hypersonic weapons technologies as a way of finding a counter-system that can stop hypersonic weapons when the need comes up.
In an online publication, the Pentagon seems to be studying the options to build a space-based surveillance network that would eliminate the blind spots in the existing defenses.
“A low-earth-orbit constellation of sensor satellites would track and provide fire control capabilities to allow the military to intercept hypersonic weapons better than existing satellites which are in high orbit and cannot adequately track hypersonic weapons.”
While the extreme speed offered by hypersonic technology has lots of advantages, improper design and loss of control may become sources of accidents which must be very fatal due to the uncontrolled speed.
The fear of such has made the current flying devices, especially weapons with such technology to be crewless.
Hypersonic commercial airplanes or military jets could have a problem with take-off and landing especially when the space available for such actions is small.
