A Zircon hypersonic missile is launched from Russian Navy frigate Admiral Gorshkov
Ryan Saavedra – The Daily Wire Sept 15, 2023
Under President Joe Biden, the United States Military is far behind its top adversaries — Russia and communist China — in having hypersonic missiles ready for combat use.
China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in the summer of 2021 that traveled at speeds of more than 15,000 miles an hour — at least 20 times the speed of sound.
Iranian President Raeisi at the unveiling of the Fattah hypersonic-missile in June 2023. Click to enlarge
The U.S. is now pouring billions into its defense budget and making serious efforts in reaching out to key players in the private sector to help fix the problem, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The report noted that the U.S. has invested billions in the technology since the 1950s, but the projects have been repeatedly abandoned because they were not useful at the time. The U.S. also far outpaced its adversaries in weapons capabilities for decades.
“My concern about the lack of progress on hypersonics is only increasing,” said retired Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten. “We need to move faster in multiple directions.”
While the U.S. still has by far the most powerful military in the world, hypersonic technology in the hands of Russia and China can quickly “alter the strategic balance that has long undergirded U.S. defense policy,” the report said, because they could “challenge that superiority by evading U.S. early warning systems designed to detect attacks on North America, or striking U.S. naval assets, including aircraft carriers, as well as key bases abroad.”
The report noted that China got ahead of the U.S. in developing hypersonic weapons by using “American research on hypersonics — published openly in scientific journals — that the U.S. government funded for decades.”
The Chinese “clearly used” the U.S. taxpayer-funded research on weapons systems intended for the U.S. to advance their own military technology.
Defense officials are casting a wide net with how they are responding to the threat, including by developing what “will ultimately be more advanced” hypersonic missiles than Russia or China has and defense systems that can shoot down hypersonic missiles.
Very cheap for a right wing rag to blame Biden.
This is a decades long problem and it starts with the MIC greed gravy train. It can’t be fixed, unless they start again.
Take one new factory turning out 155mm shells. The bankers will want a 20yr contract. The US can’t afford it.
As to the US struggling with hypersonic tech, I don’t believe this rubbish, but maybe I am wrong, maybe the US took a major step backwards when the original German Nazis died off?
America’s decline is seen in all the streets, with the low IQ Races, and whenever they speak, loud but only adjacent to human communication
Nobody knows wat the US have been working on, everyone now adapts to the Sun Tzu strategies. It looks the US are not going to join Europe in the battle for the Ukrainian swamps anyway, according to the WH administration, Zelensky is not allowed a speech to Congress next week, it might be NATO is on it’s own. No M1 tanks yet, no F16’s, delayed promises, some up to 1.5 years like 250 M1117 armored vehicles.
Thus European whipping boy’s secretary general Stoltenberg now prepares Europe for a long war in Ukraine while the request of weapons and ammunitions already exceeds the production capacity of the alliance.
Putin please nuke your gas deliverer concurent norway.
this stolzenberg needs a beating !
Anything faster than mach 5 is Hypersonic by definition and anything slower than that but faster than mach 1.2 is Supersonic. Above mach 10 is defined as High-Hypersonic and above mach 25 is possible in re-entry if air-resistance is managed.
With that out of the way, most ballistic missiles have hypersonic warheads specially after re-entering atmosphere (those that do) but they are not so throughout their entire flight and their initial stages. So a missile itself is true hypersonic if it reaches a minimum of mach 5 within atmosphere and not just outside of it and throughout its flight even in the initial stage shortly after launch.
Iran revealed Kheibar (خیبر) which is the 4th generation of (خرمشهر), soon after revealed FATTAH hypersonic missile. The range as usual is much higher than 1.4K or 2K, if a warhead has exoatmospheric guidance it can reach very far indeed as there is little or no friction outside of the atmosphere.
Main fuel for Kheibar is liquid and of Hypergolic type which is poisonous, however because it can be stored in room temperature it reduces preparation time compared to other liquid-fuels, it is mostly suitable for missile-silos. This missile also has solid-fuel in its warhead for guidance when outside atmosphere. Hypergolic fuel needs an oxidizer which ignites when it comes to contact with; this means there are two tanks for each part of the fuel. The Kheibar missile has 3 engines, 1 powerful thruster and two vernier thrusters to do the thrust-vectoring and guiding of the missile and so it has no fins/wings which in turn combined with special coating significantly reduces radar cross-section. The engine compartment has been designed to be inside the fuel tank to reduce length of the missile to 13 meters which again makes them suitable for missile silos. When the warhead exits atmosphere its speed is Mach 16 (~5.48 km/s or ~19756 km/h) and in terminal phase when the warhead hits the target, due to air friction its speed is reduced to Mach 8 (~2.7 km/s). The exoatmospheric guidance system of Kheibar has its own solid-fuel and on itself has 9 engines, 8 small ones for all sorts of directional movements of which 4 are for rotational and another 4 for thrust correction, together provide complete 3D movement of the warhead; there is also a larger thruster for the main push. The warhead is 1.5 tonne and it is claimed that 1 tonne can be ordnance. There is another twist here, as one of the heaviest warheads among Iran’s missiles there is a special warhead for Kheibar that can contain up to 80 guided bomblets. However this is not like the classic cluster munition, these bomblets open wings and can travel significant distance on their dive. Iran has developed different types of these winged bombs that open their wings once dropped, one of the lighter ones is Sadid-345, it is 34 kg and is 1.63 meters long with a diameter of 152 mm which can be dropped from Shahed-129 drones and ISIS has been on the receiving end of many of these. Another is Yasin which is the heaviest (225 KG) winged bomb and enables older generation fighter jets like SU-24 for example to engage targets from 50KM away and thus escape possible range of many air-defence systems, such bombs enable obsolete fighter-jets to remain useful even in 2023. So it is possible that the special warhead for Kheibar uses a lighter precision guided winged munition with the weight of about 12.5 KG so 80 of them can be released above the target, this means the warhead does not even have to enter atmosphere and could just empty the load above and these winged munitions could travel very far indeed cover various spots of a base for instance, while the explosive amount for each maybe small, it will be enough to destroy light targets such as radars, planes on the runway, helicopters and other vehicles, etc… These however could potentially be destroyed by C-RAM air-defence systems. Just imagine 5 Kheibar missiles with these warheads above a base drop their guided bomblets, that is 400 targets! Or the Kheibar could just be carrying a single 1 tonne ordnance and create a massive explosion that actually could destroy even well dugout bunkers, in this case the speed will be mack 8, C-RAM or the likes can’t even blink. C-RAM or Counter – Rocket, Artillery, Mortar can’t handle anything faster than mack ~1.65 in normal weather conditions. The warhead at that speed is glowing hot so a laser defence system is useless ineffective. It takes 2-4 seconds for the hit!
FATTAH on the other hand is all solid fuel and likely launched diagonally unlike the Kheibar that is launched vertically. It can quickly reach mach 13 within atmosphere so it is a true hypersonic ballistic missile, it uses fins for guidance within atmosphere, but outside it has a single thruster with a movable nozzle! There are some special ramp-like hollow protrusions in front of the fins that with the help of special coating increase the heat resistance and melting point of the fins long enough for it to reach the target. In hypersonic speeds the tip of the warhead should not be very pointy as this would increase heat absorption, now in FATTAH it is still somewhat pointy which suggests they have found a balance or a new composite material considering the speed to reach the target and the melting point. It is claimed that upon impact it is mach 23 which is crazy fast, about 7889 m/s or ~8 KM per second!!! Warheads of other missiles like Dezful also reach mach 6 or 7 upon impact and their fins burn and glow, but FATTAH will likely appear like a glowing shooting star that from re-entry to impact might be less than 2 seconds even if you consider it drop from stratosphere.
Guidance system of those PGMs like winged bombs are GPS. However Iran’s missiles and drones use very advanced Inertial Guidance system. It can handle topographic data combined with Fiber-Optic-Gyroscopes(FOG) in their multi-axis Inertial Navigation System. FOGs are essentially made of an optical string in a loop, polarized light pass through them and based on an effect called “Sagnac interference” angular position and rotation rate can be measured very accurately; these are cheap to make and have no moving parts which means they are resistant to vibration and pressure perfect for missiles and drones, however they have to be extremely well calibrated for the individual unit which is apparently not easy. This means no Hollywood jamming or electronic warfare works against these missile or drones like Shahed-136. The entire guidance is virtual and onboard.
Now Iran has developed two hypersonic missiles that are very different in design in just a few days and yet both are cutting edge and unique. If you look at the Russian or Chinese hypersonic missiles they look very different than the Iranian missiles. Besides there is no transfer of top and key military technology to friends or allies by any country throughout history.
Former head of CENTCOM Gen McKenzie has admitted that no “maneuver war” is possible against Iran, At most US can blow up targets inside Iran and Iran will do the same against all US targets around the region in various countries. The humiliation will be much greater for US.
my two tomans
Comment jews wants the demise of the USA
What better way to hyper hype into a trillion dollar defense budget than to convince everyone of a lack? Do “we” have any weapon systems YOU don’t know about?
If someone sent one of those hyper hyped missiles this way, what would hit it, you know, @ forty years after Ronnie Raygun’s “star wars”? A fully operational death star maybe?
“What better way to hyper hype into a trillion dollar defense budget than to convince everyone of a lack?”
But there is “a lack”; not just “a” “lack” but many lacks. Why should anyone expect anything different? You can’t foster such decadence and corruption in a society as the Satanists have done in the U.S. and then still expect to excel in anything, whether it’s military technology or affordable health care. The Satanists destroyed their way to the top of this society now they’re reaping what they’ve sown.
“Do ‘we’ have any weapon systems YOU don’t know about?”
Probably nothing that matters because see above.