Hypersonic missiles

[SG500]

On the OK news.

The hypersonic missiles race is heating up but the West is behind

Russia and China are leading the global race in hypersonic missiles - how worried should we be that the US is playing catch up and the UK has none?

www.bbc.co.uk

Dave.

 

[Eggburt1969]

A poor quality article from a person who it would seem has little prior knowledge of the subject. I have found this to be a very normal occurrence for BBC articles related to weapons technology. They really need to employ, contract-in, people with a bit of actual knowledge, but I think this area of knowledge goes against the ethical viewpoint.

Firstly, next to all ballistic missiles are hypersonic. Secondly the race is mostly for two classes of weapon that have guided hypersonic flight.

The first class are reentry vehicles (RV) that are not only controlled in flight, such as the earlier manoeuvrable reentry vehicle (MaRV) type, but fly a depressed trajectory (low altitude) and commonly either perform a simple guided-gliding flight, or the more advance skipping (increasing and deceasing altitude) manoeuvring type flight. These are known/referred to as hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV).

The second type are souped-up cruise missiles that generally use scramjet air-breathing engines as their power source to maintain their hypersonic flight. These are known/referred to as hypersonic cruise missiles (HCM).

Other weapons that are part of these 'hypersonic' shenanigans are the older type of ballistic missile that doesn't have a separating RV, but can fly some interesting guided (endoatmospheric and exoatmospheric) flight paths, and ballistic missiles that carry and release one or more MaRV. An example of the first is the Russian Federation 9M723 series, and its air-launched version, which is slightly erroneously referred to as the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal.

This information may be a bit out of date technically. This as I don't really follow the subject any more as I haven't been the technical advisor to the Jane's (now Janes) publication Jane's Missile and Rockets JMR for years. This is a blessing in disguise as the material that used to get sent in was often a nightmare for me to correct technically (not for grammar, spelling, etc.) due to its poor technical and often factual content.