RAF to develop hypersonic planes...(?)
 

...which could top speeds of more than 3,000mph to dodge missiles

Probably cheaper than F-35, though that ain't saying much.

Devising the software for the bomb-release at 3000mph to hit a specific target will be a little challenge, as will the test flights for the release mechanism.

Anyway, Superman, the Flash and perhaps Iron Man IV will still be able to intercept such aircraft if launched against the Hew Hess Hay.

It's ok, the weapons will be destroyed as soon as they get pushed (because they won't want to leave on their own) in to the air flow, going from 0 to 3000mph instantly. Unless they have thermal protection too.

In all seriousness, it's good to see reaction engines getting some funding. I thought they'd proved that the pre-cooler works well enough.

3000 mph.....wonder what the turning radius for that would be.....as too avoiding missiles by jinking.....oh yeah right!

Whilst research of any sort is good (rotary wing ideas were scorned in 1923) there might be other ways of countering missiles, if that is really the aim of the exercise.

Has the countering of enemy missiles by more conventional means been exhausted? I thought SEAD technology was still being explored further etc.

If this is just a vanity project, then there are other areas which could use the money and as stated above, safely releasing a weapon at hyper speeds is a challenge - perhaps the idea is to chuck it out backwards or somesuch.

O-D

CAS's speech here.
Only a para on Reaction Engines.
But seems there's substance to the pre-cooler tech, despite the nay-sayers (I'm assuming it's the SABRE concept he's talking about).
Avoiding weapons - at those speeds (hypersonic regime generally being accepted as starting at Mach 5 - or a mile a second - the same speed as the X-15) it'd simply be a case of a vehicle making a slight course adjustment to put you miles away in a comparatively short space of time.
Remember - this has all been done over 50 years ago - admittedly with a different type of power source- and one of those who did it has another historic achievement to his name that we are all celebrating at the moment... Neil Alden Armstrong.
Check out below from around 2.51 - max Q of 1500lbs psi at FL50 before pullup at Mach 6 to 317,000 feet. And all this when cars still had fins...
Yes, the turning radius would be massive, but so was the SR-71's at a tortoise-like Mach 3.
As to releasing weapons - surely the kinetic energy alone of anything of significant weight would be enough to cause mucho damage if released from a vehicle travelling at Mach 5+
The D-21 separated from mother successfully on several occasions - straight up - - wake vortices are still incredible to watch all these years later.
There was only one nasty collision as far as I am aware.
Again - there's an order of magnitude of difference between M3 and M5 - but wouldn't imagine it's an unsolvable problem.
Many other engineering challenges with travelling so fast - even at great height.
Iconel and other super-alloys might not stand the heat.... ceramics?
Then there's the plasma - say goodbye to high data-rate uplinks and downlinks no doubt.
Much more likely to power a hypersonic missile - than something with a pilot in it.
But we can only hope...

And the size of the nav bag to put your gizmos in!

...actually, unless it flew really high, wouldn't plasma make it pretty useless as a recon or sensor platform?
Hard to see through...

"RAF to develop hypersonic planes... (?)". I doubt that an organisation that is incapable of assuring the airworthiness of a fleet of simple gliders and motor gliders will be capable of developing advanced airborne platforms!

It's likely wishful thinking by the journos who wrote the story.
The speech refers quite clearly to powerplants only.

O-Dstill are by some .......

And CAS will ensure that no middle-aged white men are involved in the project ........

Hypersonic engines.................... why do you need Pilots ?

Hillier spoke to journos at a roundtable after the event, so most of what he said on the subject is not in the transcript of his speech.

When they can't afford the basics this is madness - another sop to industry

I could do with a hypersonic plane. Lots of doors to fit over the summer.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....70e72d65de.jpg

If memory serves, Switzerland keeps its fleet of F-18s carefully throttled, because the aircraft would leave Swiss air space while accelerating to supersonic speed.
Suspect the RAF would similarly run out of UK air space before reaching hypersonic speed, unless perhaps westbound...

Hypersonic Flight and Continuous Comms

Anyone up for the latest challenge?

SBIR Solicitation

The current information pack is locked in pre-release :suspect:

IG

Interesting.
Didn't think of that - even missile telemetry would be a problem at high dynamic pressures.

EDIT:

Was able to access further text - see below.
Interest vendors are locked but they're talking turbine based combined cycle.
Isn't that the Skunk Works design where the turbine is in the scramjet freeflow, up until the point the scramjet lights, and then the turbine retracts?
Hmmm - Rocketdyne - the door closes once the scramjet lights...
https://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...ic-jet-engine/


II. TOPIC OVERVIEW a. Objective Develop and validate performance of robust distributed instrumentation in air-platform extreme environments (combined thermal, mechanical, and acoustic loading). b. Description Turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) vehicles will be flying in conditions that subject their propulsion systems to harsh environments not previously seen by reusable air vehicles. While they fly over narrower regimes, other single-use hypersonic vehicles experience many of the same harsh conditions experienced by TBCC vehicles. Even conventional aircraft may have areas of combined thermal, mechanical, and acoustic loading. For control systems in high-speed systems, the improvement in advanced instrumentation technologies are required to achieve the required performance and operability over the vehicle’s flight trajectory. This wide range of application environments necessitates extensive ground testing, which must also utilize advanced instrumentation technologies to characterize the performance and operability of the vehicles. At the same time, these instruments will need to be robust enough to survive repeated testing in simulated environments, and in operational environments on flight vehicles with low false-alarm rates. Physical understanding and modeling of representative environments is required to provide invaluable insight into the challenge of integrating these instruments into future applications. Sensing modalities addressing key phenomena, including aerodynamics, boundary layer transition, thermal protection system performance, ablative properties, material effects, and scramjet engine operation are desired. Improvements in instrumentation techniques could reduce uncertainty in ground and flight tests, increase safety, and improve design of future air platforms. Conventional instruments suffer from an inability to survive extreme environments and do not provide reliable, distributed data such as pressure, temperature, heat flux, shear, displacement, flow velocity, Mach, equivalence ratio, core flow properties, etc. Proper instrument types that are robust, reliable, have a low packing factor, and are easy to replace are vital to enabling next-generation air platforms and high-speed weapons. This topic seeks to address the above challenges through the construction of innovative distributed instrumentation applicable to high-speed testing and operations. This effort will culminate in a robust instrumentation system (e.g. sensor, wiring, signal processor) to advance testing capabilities and provide more effective decision-making data for both test and/or operational vehicles. The validation data that could be gathered by an instrumentation system resulting from this work would assist in effective operation of next-generation hypersonic vehicles. It is also expected that the instrumentation system developed by this effort will help to improve data gathering in any propulsion system experiencing high thermoacoustic loads (i.e., buried engines in subsonic and supersonic platforms). c. Phase I Develop a distributed instrumentation system design to meet hypersonic propulsion system requirements. Develop instrument design and fabrication techniques. Conduct system-level modeling and analysis and show improvements in propulsion and overall vehicle and/or test article performance. Develop plans for demonstrating the instrumentation system in a relevant environment. Designs capable of advancing hypersonic vehicle research are of particular interest, but designs that facilitate hypersonic research article testing are also desired. Phase I deliverables will include a final report that contains the initial instrumentation system design and preliminary performance results. Phase I payable milestones for this SBO should include: i. Month 2: Report on requirements for instrumentation system architectures, and potential instrumentation system architectures ii. Month 4: Report on acquisition/fabrication feasibility of potential instrumentation architectures; preliminary plans for demonstrating the instrumentation system in a relevant environment iii. Month 6: Phase I Final Report containing initial instrumentation system design and preliminary performance results Proposers interested in submitting a Direct to Phase II (DP2) proposal must provide documentation to substantiate that the scientific and technical merit and feasibility described above has been met and describes the potential commercial applications. Documentation should include all relevant information including, but not limited to: technical reports, test data, prototype designs/models, and performance goals/results. For detailed information on DP2 requirements and eligibility, please refer to section 4.2 and Appendix B of HR001119S0035. d. Phase II Complete development of the instrumentation system and perform ground and/or flight testing of the system. Focus should be on validation of the system in the harsh environments experienced by hypersonic vehicles, but other extreme environment applications may also be considered. Collect instrument performance data and demonstrate utility for hypersonic systems. Phase II deliverables will include a final report that contains the finished instrumentation system and demonstrations results. Phase II payable milestones for this SBO should include: i. Month 2: Technical and financial status update ii. Month 4: Technical and financial status update iii. Month 6: Report on final design of instrumentation system; technical and financial status update iv. Month 8: Technical and financial status update v. Month 10: Technical and financial status update vi. Month 12: Report on status of demonstrating the selected instrumentation system in a relevant environment; technical and financial status update vii. Month 16: Technical and financial status update viii. Month 18: Technical and financial status update ix. Month 20: Technical and financial status update x. Month 22: Technical and financial status update xi. Month 24: Phase II Final Report on finished instrumentation system; demonstrations results xii. Month 26: Option-period technical and financial status update xiii. Month 28: Option-period technical and financial status update xiv. Month 30: Option-period technical and financial status update xv. Month 32: Option-period technical and financial status update xvi. Month 34: Phase II Option Final Report e. Dual Use Applications (Phase III) An innovative sensing and instrumentation system may be an enabler of future supersonic and hypersonic commercial aircraft, enable reusable access to space, and enable the military to develop reusable hypersonic aircraft and expendable weapons.

That's a lot of words.

Hence my (somewhat) understated question mark!

Indeed, 10 million is more or less nothing when tackling a problem of this size.

Sadly, that is the problem with a lot of these stories ; makes good press , but no real substance . Like the "spaceports" planned in UK , (with initial budget- allegedly- 3 million ) . As one wheezer said , that should cover the sign posting .. All great ideas steadily going downhill due lack of realistic funding .

The future of Aerospace lies in joint collaboration , so I do wonder what the future holds as the good ship UK plans to set sail on it's own . Hopefully ESA , CERN and even a rethink on Galileo will figure in somebody's policy planning , that's if we even have people in charge who actually know what they are talking about .

The whole thing would be pointless if the aim is to outrun laser.

"The future of Aerospace lies in joint collaboration"

TBH it's been like that since the mid-70's.................... go-it-alone programs are very scarce outside the USA & China, sucessful go-it-alone programs are even rarer

This sort of announcement is really to

a) get some funds

b) position yourself for the share of partnership talks

https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/ne...ulsion-systemsThe announcement might be PR but it's getting spent with RR and REL and will let them crunch the numbers to see if precoolers could enhance conventional jet engines (perhaps whatever engine the Tempest might use) and, I speculate, to work out what a hypersonic platform based on SABRE might be capable of. This is all based on existing work that's already happening. There have been long-range hypersonic aircraft studies like LAPCAT that have been done already with its SCIMITAR engine. There are multiple studies going on for 2 stage to orbit launchers which are based on combat aircraft-size aircraft first stage using the REL engine. I think this is just another fork in the tree of different applications that are being looked at for the smallest size-SABRE engine. So I don't think 100s of millions are needed at this point.

I forgot to mention that they are also studying a hypersonic business jet. It would be extremely expensive probably but you can imagine that such a development might provide a neat stepping stone to something with a military purpose. A government might not have to pay for the whole thing if it can breathe just enough life into it to get it to the point where there was useful commercial interest.

That's the whole Reaction Engines saga. Air breathing engines for launch also turn out to be of interest for hypersonics. It's not as if there aren't a number of companies out there who've developed launch systems without government involvement.

Anyhow to be fair they have had some government money anyhow and their project was born out of the ashes of Hotol. So it's really about pushing forward something that never got its chance. Is it worth it? Oh no, we should just sit back, wait for the Americans to invent it and then pay back their development costs by purchasing 1 or 1 1/2 if we can afford it, because as we know - there's no point investing in Engineers or science.

Although a hypersonic platform equipped with a laser could be interesting. Certainly no faffing around with difficulties in launching kinetic weapons.

...have to work out a way of getting said beam through the plasma envelope tho...