Posted on 06/04/2015 4:11:34 AM PDT by lbryce
The cruise missiles so often used to destroy ISIS installations and other enemy targets descend like a flash out of the sky, traveling up to 600mph as they approach unsuspecting terrorist compounds, hideouts, and ammo storage facilities. But the impressive speed at which a cruise missile is propelled will seem like a proverbial stroll in the park when an awesome new generation of hypersonic “birds” take flight as an operating Air Force weapon system.
The website military.com reveals updated details of the progress the Air Force is making in the development of the X-51, the hypersonic air vehicle that’s expected to be in service within the next decade. Though it’s known as the “Waverider,” the X-51 certainly doesn’t “ride the waves” in a conventional sense — it travels far above water or land as it reaches speeds up to Mach 5 — many times faster than the speed of sound.
The secret to the X-51 Waverider’s remarkable speed lies in its advanced scramjet technology, which has reportedly been in development since at least 2004. According to the Air Force chief scientist working on the program, Mica Endsley, a successful test flight in 2013 showed the technology is workable at an exceptionally high speed. “A B-52H Stratofortress carried the X-51A on its wing before it was released at 50,000 feet and accelerated up to Mach 4.8 in 26 seconds. As the scramjet climbed to 60,000 feet it accelerated to Mach 5.1.”
(Excerpt) Read more at westernjournalism.com ...
“Made in China”?
Hey, the Taliban are fighting ISIS so get a two-fer...
http://www.afghanistantimes.af/isis-fighters-decapitate-10-taliban-in-nangarhar/
Cute, but it can’t take out Iranian nukes.
And our cowards in charge won’t develop the weapon that can.
Thanks for posting...good to know we still have something left to fight with after leaving most of our equipment on the ground in the middle east...getting a little tired of reading about all of these amazing weapons we have developed despite the fact we seem to refuse to use any of them to protect our own...
We launched 47 Tomahawks against ISIS in September last year. It isn’t clear if we’ve used any since then. Most of the attacks on ISIS are probably PGMs which cost far less than a Tomahawk.
While this is a good article, the author’s opening paragraph makes me wonder if he knows anything.
So, we spend a multi-zillion amount of dollars on a weapon system to destroy an ISIS ammo dump with a conventional explosive warhead??
Puhleez.
Worse, we’ve nearly stopped building proven weapons systems that work — Tomahawks, A-10, F22.
how many HE iron bombs and napalm bombs would equal the cost of one of these? I’d be more a fan of the 1000 flights of bombers flying over the middle east dropping vast amounts of HE and napalm over wide areas using carpet bombing techniques rather than more accuracy.
That seems like a very expensive weapon that will have marginal effect in just a conventional role.
I would however suggest it as a replacement for the cruise missile in the nuclear role, maybe a 500 kiloton thermonuclear warhead. This would be a strategic weapon that would be credible for several decades to come, if we were to produce it in that role.
Cruise missiles will need replacing in the coming years, and they have been proven to be vulnerable enough to get shot down by modern air defenses.
I doubt that will happen though. We seem to be on a path to unilateral disarmament through Obsolescence and decay. I bet the Russians and Chinese will find it useful though.
The Navy Tomcats used to have that capability. The Phoenix antiair missile could be launched from over a hundred miles out.
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