On September 27th, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that it had successfully test fired the Hypersonic Air Breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) missile in collaboration with the US Air Force last week.

The missile is manufactured by Raytheon Technologies and equipped with Northrop Grumman's supersonic combustion ramjet engine. The engine starts a few seconds after the missile leaves the carrier. The engine compresses the inhaled air and mixes it with hydrocarbon fuel, igniting the rapidly flowing airflow mixture to propel the missile at speeds exceeding 5 Mach.

The Hypersonic Air Breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) missile operates best in an oxygen rich atmosphere, where speed and maneuverability make it difficult to detect in a timely manner. This missile can strike targets at a faster speed than hypersonic missiles, and even without high explosives, its enormous kinetic energy is sufficient to destroy the target.

Andrew Nordler, the HAWC project manager at the Tactical Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, stated that "HAWC's flight test is a successful demonstration of the capability of hypersonic cruise missiles, which will become an efficient tool for our combat personnel." The goal of this test flight is a comprehensive test of carrier integration, launch sequence, safe separation from the carrier, booster ignition and boost, booster separation, engine ignition and cruise, and all test objectives have been achieved. HAWC flight test data will help validate system design and manufacturing methods.

The US Department of Defense has identified hypersonic weapons and anti hypersonic capabilities as the highest technological priority for national security. The United States and its allies must have the ability to prevent and defeat such weapons, "said Kramer, President of Missile and Defense at Raytheon Technologies

This successful test flight is based on the groundbreaking scramjet engine project, which mainly involves the X-30 National Aerospace Plane, NASA X-43 aircraft, and the US Air Force X-51 hypersonic unmanned aerial vehicle.

The X-30 is a reusable aerospace aircraft research aircraft jointly developed by the US Department of Defense and NASA. Its purpose is to compensate for the shortcomings of ground testing equipment in studying flight phenomena above Mach 8, develop and verify basic technologies for hypersonic flight, and manufacture more advanced space transportation systems and military and civilian aircraft in terms of technology, cost, and application. It is one of the components of the National Aerospace Plane Program (NASP) in the United States.

The X-43 series hypersonic aircraft is an unmanned aerial vehicle secretly developed by NASA. In 1996, the prototype of X-43A was born; In 1999, the X-43A flight simulator was developed; In 2000, X-43A ground test; In 2001, the first test flight failed; In 2004, the second and third test flights were successful.

The X-51A aircraft is a hypersonic verification aircraft developed jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, with the codename "SED-WR", Scramjet Engine Demonstrator-Waverider）。 The aircraft was jointly developed by Boeing and Pratt&Whitney, powered by a JP-7 hydrocarbon fuel scramjet engine, and designed to fly at speeds between 6 and 6.5 Mach. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop a new type of weapon that is more than five times faster than any missile in the existing US arsenal and can strike targets at any location on Earth within one hour.

At the time of the test launch in the United States, Russia is also accelerating its development of hypersonic weapons. On July 20th, Russia announced that the escort ship "Admiral Gorshkov" used "Zircon" missiles to strike ground targets along the Barents Sea coast 350 kilometers away in the White Sea waters. During the testing process, the "Zircon" missile flew at a speed close to 7 Mach and successfully hit the intended target, verifying its tactical and technical performance.

The "Zircon" missile is Russia's first sea based hypersonic cruise missile, which can be launched from frigates, cruisers, and submarines. It has a maximum range of 1000 kilometers, a maximum cruising speed of 10000 kilometers per hour, and a warhead weight of up to 400 kilograms. This weapon can destroy all types of surface vessels and ground targets, and cannot be intercepted by missile defense systems or air defense systems. Russian President Putin has referred to it as one of the unparalleled new generation missile systems in the world.

Source: Military Eagle Consulting