"Russia has beaten us." Washington pointed to a serious threat, 04.01.2023.
MOSCOW, April 1 - RIA Novosti, David Narmania. The United States reported on the testing of a hypersonic missile. The flight went wrong. The Americans have not been able to create their own "new generation weapons" for more than two decades. About the main difficulties - in the material RIA Novosti.
Catch up with Russia and China
The launches of the prototype AGM-183A ARRW (as the rocket is called) took place on March 13. "The tests were not successful. We did not receive the data we need," said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall.
Prior to this, the AGM-183A was tested in December and, according to the Pentagon , quite successfully. The prototype was dropped from a B-52H bomber, after which the solid-propellant engine turned on and dispersed the rocket to a speed of five times the speed of sound. At the end of the trajectory, the prototype was blown up in the air.
In general, last year was successful for the United States in the hypersonic program: flights in May and July were also without problems.
But the current fiasco rolls back the situation a year and a half ago - in 2021, all three launches turned into a failure. Because of this, Congress even cut funding by almost three times - from 308 to 115 million dollars.
Washington has been chasing hypersound for a long time - they started talking about it at the beginning of the 2000s. They created the DARPA Falcon HTV-2 project, started developing the X-51A Waverider cruise missile. But both programs were closed.
Now, in addition to ARRW, they are working on several more options for hypersonic weapons. But none of the samples has yet appeared in the army.
“Before, we didn’t have a locomotive for this technology. <...> There was no need. Now everything is different. We urgently need to catch up: Moscow and Beijing are ahead of us,” American Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe said in November.
But you have to fork out. The Pentagon has requested $4.7 billion. According to the Congressional Budget Office, three hundred hypersonic missiles will cost about $18 billion over the next 20 years, a third more than the same number of medium-range ballistic missiles. And that's without taking into account development and testing costs.
Special technology
Hypersonic weapons, as you might guess, differ from conventional weapons primarily in speed.
However, the same Topol-M, which was put into service back in 1997, accelerates to several Mach numbers. But along a ballistic trajectory, which means that it can be calculated and shot down by air defense systems.
Hypersonic missiles are a much more difficult target. They do not just fly at a speed of more than five Mach numbers - they maneuver. Nothing will stop them.
In addition, this area is not limited by any international agreements. Although missiles can be equipped with nuclear warheads.
Race leaders
Russia is so far the only country officially armed with hypersonics. There is a kind of triad here.
Earlier than others, "Daggers" entered the service - in 2017. They are launched from aircraft. The carrier is usually the MiG-31K. There is an option with Tu-22M3M.
In combat, these missiles were first used in Syria on February 19 last year. Then in Ukraine : on March 22, an underground arsenal dating back to Soviet times was destroyed in the mountains of Ivano-Frankivsk region . Attacks on Ukrainian military infrastructure continue.
In December 2019, the Avangard was put on combat duty, capable of accelerating up to Mach 27. It has an intercontinental range. The controlled unit is launched with the help of a ballistic missile - the Sarmat ICBMs are designed for this.
According to the American portal Popular Mechanics , "Vanguard" takes warheads of two megatons - twice the size of the only American Minuteman III ICBM and 130 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
In August 2022, the Zircon, the world's first hypersonic anti-ship missile, was put into service. In January, the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, equipped with such weapons, entered combat service.
“The main thing is that even this one ship has significantly changed the balance of forces at sea, in the Northern Fleet, in our favor,” emphasizes Doctor of Military Sciences Konstantin Sivkov.
Such a frigate, according to him, can single-handedly disable an aircraft carrier or several ships. Therefore, Americans have something to worry about.
Adds a headache and China. The PLA does not yet officially have hypersonics, but ICBMs for such weapons entered the troops back in 2019. In particular, DF-17.
And the tests of the Chinese are much more successful. In 2021, a hypersonic glide unit - a glider - separated from the launch vehicle, flew around the globe and hit a conditional target with an accuracy of several tens of kilometers.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, compared it to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik in 1957. For the first time in the 21st century, we are talking about the technological backlog of the United States in the field of security. Previously, only the USSR could deliver such troubles . Recently, two countries have already been able to do this.
https://ria.ru/20230401/giperzvuk-1861908221.html
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