Experts predict that hypersonic gliders are likely to start entering service in the 2020s
‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?/ That’s not my department!’ says Wernher von Braun.satirical ditty on the Nazi-turned-American rocketeer was faithful to the essence of early missile development, whose principal challenge was hoisting the weapons into the sky. Gravity did most of the rest. The first warheads capable of steering on descent did not arrive until the 1980s.
There are two basic designs: cruise missiles and gliders. Hypersonic cruise missiles are essentially faster versions of existing ones but powered by very different jet engines. Gliders are pricier and harder to build, but can travel faster and farther, and so are receiving more attention. Like-2s, they are lofted into space and fall to earth unpowered. But unlike the old-fashioned projectiles, they do not follow a predictable, parabolic arc through the sky.
The only thing that seems to work, says an expert at an arms company that is developing gliders, is to cover the vehicle in cork. But that is vaporised in minutes or less, so does not work for long-range missiles. Dissipating heat as quickly as it is built up is “daunting” and “perhaps impossible” above Mach 10, he says.
Russia has been working on hypersonics for decades, haltingly. Its flagship Avangard glider was flaunted publicly by President Vladimir Putin in March 2018 and tested to great fanfare in December, after which it was declared ready for service this year—somewhat implausibly, say experts. Pavel Podvig of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research points out that very few of the glider’s tests were successful and that the programme was nearly shut down four years ago.
Area defences, which guard broad swathes of territory like continental America, rely on shooting down missiles midcourse and on a straightforward trajectory. Gliders do not go as high and are less predictable, hence Mr Putin’s boast that the Avangard is “invulnerable to interception” .
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