Those are artist impressions. No chance they let anyone leak the real vehicles until they're at least being used.
Chinese Hypersonic Developments (HGVs/HCMs)
- Thread starter A.Man
- Start date
Those are artist impressions. No chance they let anyone leak the real vehicles until they're at least being used.
Just to reinforce what you said about these being artist impressions, the image on the right has been extensively used by Western - especially American - hypersonic articles for some time.
That's how the intake design often is but the actual shaping is classified and probably converges towards a certain shape for certain speeds. The Indians basically took the artist impression and made their copy for a display model. It's the typical scramjet powered HGV just like most of the artist impressions of hypersonic missiles.
@Tirdent since you are knowledgeable on Russian platforms and projects (guessing you're ethnically Russian?)
Do you have much information on Russian developments in comparison to the latest US and Chinese HGV related topics?
My understanding is that Russia has fielded "Avangard" which is a long range delivery vehicle for (but limited to) nuclear warheads, riding on various ranged ballistic missiles where appropriate? The other HGV is "Zircon", an air breathing weapon (scramjet) that is multirole in nature with the core purpose of serving as an anti-ship/ anti-surface weapon. Being much smaller and versatile for purposes, it is no doubt air launchable or intended to be air launchable if not yet.
Has Russia formally acknowledged Russian hypersonic wind tunnels? What sorts of specifications have they revealed?
How would you consider the overall progress made by the major three countries in this field? Which nation currently leads it given what we know from publicly available information and state disclosures? The US is both the most secretive (from traditional observations and behaviour) and yet also the most transparent like ARRW testing, X-51 etc. China is surprisingly transparent with DF-ZF (DF-17 booster HGV) being the only nation to show one of their HGVs in near full view and a grainy H-6K mounted air launched HGV (not the WZ-8 drone but what was called the air launched ballistic missile which clearly has intakes and the expected shaping on the actual vehicle). Russia is the most secretive but also the most open with specs (claims of up to mach 20 speeds). China's testing seem to be the most successful given what the US have admitted in observation and tracing of Chinese HGV test flights since the 2010s with pretty much a clean record of long endurance successful flights. China's testing I would imagine were done well in the 2000s and 2010 flights were all weapons tests rather than R&D. China also quite publicly gave results and experimental information on Xiamen University's dual wave riding test vehicle (the only kind in the world). This is only in comparison with American tests that are revealed to the public. US falling behind is of little surprise though since they had much less need for HGV weapons compared to Chinese and Russian A2AD requirements from American CBGs and ability to strike American regional bases.
Do you have much information on Russian developments in comparison to the latest US and Chinese HGV related topics?
My understanding is that Russia has fielded "Avangard" which is a long range delivery vehicle for (but limited to) nuclear warheads, riding on various ranged ballistic missiles where appropriate? The other HGV is "Zircon", an air breathing weapon (scramjet) that is multirole in nature with the core purpose of serving as an anti-ship/ anti-surface weapon. Being much smaller and versatile for purposes, it is no doubt air launchable or intended to be air launchable if not yet.
Has Russia formally acknowledged Russian hypersonic wind tunnels? What sorts of specifications have they revealed?
How would you consider the overall progress made by the major three countries in this field? Which nation currently leads it given what we know from publicly available information and state disclosures? The US is both the most secretive (from traditional observations and behaviour) and yet also the most transparent like ARRW testing, X-51 etc. China is surprisingly transparent with DF-ZF (DF-17 booster HGV) being the only nation to show one of their HGVs in near full view and a grainy H-6K mounted air launched HGV (not the WZ-8 drone but what was called the air launched ballistic missile which clearly has intakes and the expected shaping on the actual vehicle). Russia is the most secretive but also the most open with specs (claims of up to mach 20 speeds). China's testing seem to be the most successful given what the US have admitted in observation and tracing of Chinese HGV test flights since the 2010s with pretty much a clean record of long endurance successful flights. China's testing I would imagine were done well in the 2000s and 2010 flights were all weapons tests rather than R&D. China also quite publicly gave results and experimental information on Xiamen University's dual wave riding test vehicle (the only kind in the world). This is only in comparison with American tests that are revealed to the public. US falling behind is of little surprise though since they had much less need for HGV weapons compared to Chinese and Russian A2AD requirements from American CBGs and ability to strike American regional bases.
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Russia has had hypersonic wind tunnels for years. They needed them for the Spiral project and their equivalent of the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber for example. They can also launch a model on a rocket, like a Soyuz 2.1v, and test it this way. This was done for BOR-5 in Soviet times.
These vehicles can go up to Mach 25 so no available tunnel can adequately model the regime.
Such a launch would likely be secret and launch from Plesetsk. They can even do a depressed trajectory launch with the R29M Layzner from a submarine if they needed it. Lots of ways to test. AFAIK their tunnels go up to Mach 20. But these are in research institutes you likely never heard of. Probably in the boonies.
These vehicles can go up to Mach 25 so no available tunnel can adequately model the regime.
Such a launch would likely be secret and launch from Plesetsk. They can even do a depressed trajectory launch with the R29M Layzner from a submarine if they needed it. Lots of ways to test. AFAIK their tunnels go up to Mach 20. But these are in research institutes you likely never heard of. Probably in the boonies.
As has been said before by someone far wiser than I, 'form follows function.' The laws of physics don't care what color your flag is.
Verification through flight is one means. But having hypersonic wind tunnels to perform the thousands of verifications would no doubt be necessary.
XB-70 is not even close to hypersonic speeds. So running wind tunnel tests for that aircraft and any similar type wouldn't require hypersonic tunnels. Running actual launches to perform the test is far less ideal than being able to perform the testing in a wind tunnel, as many times as your engineers would like. For one thing, it'll allow more design variations and types far quicker than even the best luck can provide with trial and error using flight method.
I know Russia must have hypersonic wind tunnels. They must have them to develop and put into service two known HGV weapons.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Here is the video