Chinese Hypersonic Developments (HGVs/HCMs)

ACuriousPLAFan said:

50kg warhead on ARRW? That would be the same warhead weight as the Shahed 136 kamikaze drone. Even the old Harpoons has 220 kg of warhead.


I'm seeing a trend, starting with Zumwalt DDGs where larger VLS would replace the two ammo-less AGS mounts for launching hypersonic missiles. That way, the USN can have sea-based launch platforms for their hypersonic missiles with minimal reduction to warhead size and range compared to those fitted inside normal VLS. Similar proposals has been made for the upcoming DDG(X)s as well by offering the option to swap some of the onboard Mk 41 VLS with the larger VLS in the future.

Does PLAN have similar plans for their DDGs? Having navalized version of DF-17s (I'll just designate such missiles as DF-XX"N") would enable the PLAN to strike Guam from around 250 kilometers southeast of Taiwan. But for Oahu, Tindal and Diego Garcia, using the DF-17"N" would risk putting PLAN assets into areas that would not guarantee sufficient PLAAF and PLARF cover, therefore having DF-27"N" is very much necessary in those cases.

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tphuang said:

I don't quite understand your second paragraph. Yes, MK--41 probably can't fit any hypersonic missiles. MK-57 is wider, but it also looks to be too small to fit LRHW. Maybe they are looking to put it in SSNs? If you take a look at DF-17, it's too big to fit into UVLS. That's why they developed something different for UVLS. The missiles they put in UVLS is likely to have much smaller warhead. Given the range that LRHW is going for, I would be surprised if it had a large warhead. These missiles are reach just to pierce through defenses. I'm not sure how much damage they can do. Guancha folks a while back said YJ-18 does the most damage in terms of warhead size + terminal speed.

When we talk about DF-27, it's going to be land based.

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

No. What I mean is that the US Navy plans to fit newer and larger VLS cells than the Mark 41 and Mark 57 VLS on the Zumwalt DDGs and Virginia SSNs in order to load and fire navalized LRHW missile as part of the Navy's Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) capability. The upcoming DDG(X)s too will be offered with such capabilities by swapping onboard Mark 41 VLS with the larger VLS.

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tphuang said:

All that is hypothetical at this point. Based on us military procurement and production capabilities, who knows when ddg(x) will come along. Zumwalt is so limited in numbers that it's basically irrelevant.

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An experimental investigation of supersonic combustion of cracked JP-10​

Diffusion characteristics of liquid kerosene with heat transfer in a strut-equipped supersonic combustor​

China looks to hypersonic ski-jump technology for space travel​

• An obsolete way to launch jets from aircraft carriers could hold the key to affordable transport beyond Earth’s atmosphere
• Chinese scientists declare early success in scale model test at Mach 7, but further experiments will be needed

Stephen Chen in Beijing
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Published: 4:00pm, 12 Dec, 2022

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Chinese scientists have turned to the earliest method of launching jets from aircraft carriers for a solution to one of the barriers to hypersonic space flight. Photo: Xinhua

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Chinese researchers say they have repurposed the traditional ski-jump method of launching a plane at sea for the hypersonic age, aiming to develop it for easier, safer space travel.

Wang Yunpeng, an associate professor with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Mechanics in Beijing, and his team used scaled-down versions of an orbital plane – similar to the space shuttle – and a hypersonic carrier to test the method at seven times the speed of sound.

In a paper published in peer-reviewed journal Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica on December 8, the researchers said the results proved ski-jump technology – regarded as obsolete in modern aircraft carriers – could be adapted for orbital launches from near space.

It could also solve a problem that has troubled hypersonic researchers for decades – how to overcome the strong, unpredictable turbulence generated at extremely high speeds and achieve a smooth separation between the carrier platform and the shuttle.

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So far, there has been no way to effectively eliminate the risk of the separating vehicles veering off course or even colliding.
The researchers launched a 1/80 scale plane from a metre-long (three feet) model carrier using a piston to simulate rocket engine ignition as China’s JF-12 wind tunnel powered to Mach 7. In a split second, the plane shot off the top of the carrier and, as the tunnel powered down, it dropped to the floor and broke into several pieces.

According to Wang’s team, this brief and expensive experiment “verified the feasibility and effectiveness of the active separation method”.

The JF-12, one of the world’s most powerful wind tunnels, simulates the extremely hot airflow at hypervelocity with shock waves produced by a chemical explosion. While it authentically replicates the extreme conditions of hypersonic flight, the conditions can only be maintained for one second.

It was enough time to confirm that, compared with standard separation procedures, the modified ski-jump design eliminated the gap between the two plane bodies and reduced the risk of collision to a minimum, the researchers said.

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In traditional aircraft carriers, the ski-jump acts as a short runway for aircraft, giving them just enough lift to leave the deck under their own power, while the carrier is running against the wind at full speed – about 60km/h (37mph).

For the hypersonic version, the researchers flattened the slightly upwards tilt of the ski-jump to create a perfectly flat surface, to reduce the drag which can occur when two vehicles separate at extremely high speed in the atmosphere.

During the wind tunnel experiment, the team observed that the plane nosed up slightly when it reached the end of the flat runway, thanks to an upwards nudge from the shock waves produced beneath the space plane’s upper front section.

But as the plane was about to leave the carrier platform, another group of shock waves formed near the tail, causing it to nose down. The two opposing forces cancelled each other out, resulting in a smooth, perfectly straight separation, the researchers said.

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Wang’s team connected a powerful, gas-driven piston to the rear of the test plane to achieve take-off within the experiment’s brief time frame.

They also built an automated system to coordinate the operation of everything from the experiment’s mechanical devices to the high-speed cameras which captured the separation in vivid detail.

Wang said a full-sized upper stage space plane weighing 87 tonnes – about the same as a space shuttle – would achieve take-off in about eight seconds, powered by rocket engines, with the largest generating 1,500 kilonewtons of force. The ski-jump would use less than a tenth of the main engine’s thrust, he said.

The shock tunnel results needed to be combined with other experiments with longer testing times before the technology would be ready to leave the laboratory, the researchers said.

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China plans to build a civil hypersonic fleet to transport passengers anywhere on the planet within an hour or two. In development is an air-breathing hypersonic aircraft that will be able to fly in near-space altitudes at five times the speed of sound or more.

Some scientists believe the technology will trigger a transport revolution, with the aircraft able to take off and land at existing airports, at a fraction of the cost to operate a rocket.

It will also be capable of acting as a two-stage-to-orbit launch platform for rocket-powered space planes that will take tens of thousands of passengers beyond Earth’s atmosphere each year, according to the Chinese government.

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by78 said:

Not sure of its provenance, this is allegedly an air-breathing hypersonic design from 601.

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Hyper said:

Care to send a link of the research paper.

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