Much Ado About Nothing

The way the media, especially the British media covers the U.S. Military is very odd. Today The Guardian reports:

"The Pentagon is planning a new generation of weapons, including huge hypersonic drones and bombs dropped from space, that will allow the US to strike its enemies at lightning speed from its own territory."

Now, I would have to say that's a pretty important story. Some people have even commented on how unusual it is that the mainstream U.S. press isn't covering this.

The answer is that this is old news. The very public, 1996 "Air Force 2025" study contains this statement about the one of the types of weapons the Air Force wants by 2025:

"Hypersonic Attack Aircraft A high-speed strike vehicle capable of projecting lethal force anywhere in the world in less than four hours. Operating at Mach 12 and a cruise altitude of 100,000 ft, this vehicle is a reusable two-stage system comprised of an unmanned boost vehicle and a manned hypersonic strike aircraft. The gas turbine-engined boost vehicle requires a conventional runway and accelerates the strike vehicle to Mach 3.5 and 65,000 ft. The strike vehicle then separates and uses a ramjet/scramjet engine to reach its cruise condition. The total system range is 10,000 nautical miles (NM); the hypersonic strike vehicle has an unrefueled range of 5,000 NM. It is capable of launching precision-guided munitions, including the hypersonic air-to-ground missile described in system 5.4, at a standoff distance of 1,450 NM. Alternatively, the platform may be used to transport an uninhabited unmanned air vehicle described in system 4.2."

In other words, this is simply not news. Similarly, a 2001 Global Security.org article describes the military's HyperSoar project...

"HyperSoar could fly at approximately 6,700 mph (Mach 10), while carrying roughly twice the payload of subsonic aircraft of the same takeoff weight. As a military aircraft, a HyperSoar bomber the size of an F-22 could take off from the U.S. and deliver its payload from an altitude and at a speed that would defy all current defensive measures. It could then return directly to the continental U.S. without refueling and without the need to land at forward bases on foreign soil."...

Gee, sound familiar? This is old news.

In fact, this idea is really, really not new. The Nazis dreamed up the A9, a giant manned version of the V-2 which could strike at America that is similar to the "HCV" concept the Guardian speaks of. Hypersonic bombers have long been a dream of aircraft designers, a fact that these media reports ignore.

In any event, the HCV, aka FALCON, aka HyperSoar is a good idea. Unlike ICBMs, this weapon could be considered a precision weapon. Current ICBMs are so inaccurate that they need to use nuclear weapons as warheads. With a nuke, there are no near-misses. What this new concept envisions is something with the precision bombing capability of a B-2 (recall the "decapitation strike" on the first night of the Iraq War) combined with most of the speed and range of an ICBM. As of right now, ICBMs are only options for madmen. With a hypersonic strike capability, we get all of their advantages with none of their disadvantages.

Even more interesting is the notion that at hypersonic speeds, one no longer needs bombs. A precision guided rod of titanium traveling at Mach 10 would be just as effective as most bomb, without the danger of unexploded bomb fragments...And all of this, at two hours notice.