When a jet is flying faster than the speed of sound, one small mistake can tear it apart. It was so feared that the physics blended with the supernatural in the mid 1940s. Luckily, Chuck Yeager didn’t believe in demons.
There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. His controls would freeze up, his plane would buffet wildly, and he would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man would ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.( Ridley in the 1983 movie ‘The Right Stuff.’)
But at truly high speeds flight still has plenty of risk and when the jet is so experimental that it must fly unmanned, only a computer control system can pilot it so the magic involves a control system that can react to variables like a human. Ohio State University engineers say they have designed control system software that can do just that — by adapting to changing conditions during a flight.
Government agencies have been developing faster-than-sound vehicles for decades. The latest supersonic combustion ramjets — called scramjets — burn air for fuel, and could one day carry people to space or around the world in a matter of hours.
The recent success of NASA’s X-43 hypersonic jet has spurred research into the control systems for these vehicles, said Lisa Fiorentini, doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State University. She and associate professor Andrea Serrani are developing a new control system in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (ARFL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
With tensions already rising due to the Chinese navy becoming more aggressive in asserting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy seems to have yet another reason to be deeply concerned.
After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a “kill weapon” developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.
First posted on a Chinese blog viewed as credible by military analysts and then translated by the naval affairs blog Information Dissemination, a recent report provides a description of an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km.
The range of the modified Dong Feng 21 missile is significant in that it covers the areas that are likely hot zones for future confrontations between U.S. and Chinese surface forces.
The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike.
Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.
Supporting the missile is a network of satellites, radar and unmanned aerial vehicles that can locate U.S. ships and then guide the weapon, enabling it to hit moving targets.
Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are taking very different design approaches as they compete to address the Missile Defense Agency’s growing concerns about tracking and destroying multiple targets, even decoys, lofted by ballistic missiles aimed at the U.S.
Intelligence officials are concerned that decoy technologies developed by the former Soviet Union and Russia have spread to would-be adversaries or could be duplicated by countries building up arsenals of ballistic missiles. Decoys can be as unsophisticated as metal fragments or balloons that are released along with a warhead when a ballistic missile’s nose cone opens up in flight. Or they can be more complicated and emulate the infrared signature of a ballistic missile or warhead. They are all designed to fool the MDA’s ground- and space-based sensor network as well as the infrared seekers on U.S. kill vehicles that are ultimately responsible for the endgame of a missile defense engagement.
ST. LOUIS, 29 May 2008. The Boeing Company, industry teammates, and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency completed the first laser activation testing for the Airborne Laser (ABL) missile defense program on the ground at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
“ABL’s weapon system integration team has done a great job preparing the high-energy laser for activation testing, which will ensure each laser subsystem is brought on line sequentially and safely,” says Scott
Fancher, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems. “Laser installation and the start of laser activation move the program a giant step closer to ABL’s missile shoot-down demonstration
planned for 2009.”
When a jet is flying faster than the speed of sound, one small mistake can tear it apart. It was so feared that the physics blended with the supernatural in the mid 1940s. Luckily, Chuck Yeager didn’t believe in demons.
