Affiliation(s)
1. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States
2. Nuclear Engineering Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States
3. LANL/SNL, Manager (Retired), Edge Wood New Mexico 87015, United States
4. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States
ABSTRACT
Speed is the new stealth and earlier this week America’s top nuclear
commander described a grim scenario for U.S. forces facing off against
hypersonic weapons. “We do not have any
defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us,” Air Force Gen. John
Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services
Committee on Tuesday March 20, 2018. Russian and Chinese are aggressively
developing new weapons that travel at Mach 5 or higher, which is at least five
times faster than speed of sound (hypersonic). These weapons travel in excess
of 3,600 miles per hour (1 mile per second) and currently, no military
possesses a credible defense. Finding, tracking and intercepting something that fast is unprecedented. Given
that Russia and China have invested heavily in advanced defensive technologies
that now hold most of our traditional forms of power projection at risk, this
is a significant advantage—it is one that would impose major costs upon a
defending nation. Recently, according to the director of the Army’s Rapid
Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (ARCCTO), The Army will field a battery of truck-borne hypersonic missiles in
2023, with a contract award in August, the service’s new three-star Program
Executive Officer said. The service will also field a battery of 50-kilowatt
lasers on Stryker armored vehicles by 2021, he said. A program to put a
100-plus-kilowatt laser on a heavy truck, however, is under review and may be
combined with Air Force and/or Navy efforts to reach comparable power levels,
Lt. Gen. Neil Thurgood told reporters in his interview. In this white paper we
are suggesting a new technology as a counter-measure against such an adversary
measure and threat that is aggressively being pursued by these two nations,
Russia and China both tactically and strategically. We also briefly discuss
possible physics and science of aerodynamics involved with these vehicles
traveling between range of 5 Mach and higher, where we discuss current status
and future direction driven by phenomena of plasma aerodynamics thorough
possibly, weakly ionized gases (WIG) program that was started by the former
Soviet Republics under AJAX Vehicle and that was direct understanding of the
role of plasmas in the performance of this vehicle.
KEYWORDS
Hypersonic velocity, hypersonic flying object, weak plasma gas, high
power microwave, air breakdown, hypersonic weapons.
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References