‘New US hypersonic missile is not breakthrough weapon — experts’ – TASS
It is a common conception today that the state of United States weaponry development is considerably behind that of the Russian Federation, they having dropped the ball somewhere back in late last century due to their own hubris as to the invincibility factor they thought they possessed. As far as I could ascertain, that lag was stated to be something more than a decade. Well, it now appears to be factual that this knowledge gap is more like three decades – a hopeless deficit to recover, given both the poor, fragile even, state of the US economy and the shaky foundation of the US social contract which is crumbling in real time before our bewildered gaze.
If you read the TASS news item above, you will know that the latest US weapon test of what they declare is a hypersonic missile which reaches Mach 5 speed only at rarified atmosphere levels (air launch) – if that claim can even be believed. This is nothing new. It is their old ‘Scramjet’ technology which was effectively dropped several years ago and is a concept not really suited to military missiles anyway as needing to rely on some other technology to boost it up to a working speed before it can become active. A B52 bomber used as launch vehicle is not an efficient (or safe) method for delivering a cruise missile of any kind. There has never been any video (to my knowledge) of a launch of such a vehicle as this is touted to be. The US simply relies on animations of such launches. Casting further doubt on its validity. See this video of a B52 launch of an animated (cartoon) missile launch…
Mach 5, while within the ‘supersonic’ range of speeds, is in any case only borderline ‘hypersonic’. Russia has, in service right now, a range of operational missile types which operate hypersonically, from launch, and from all available launch platforms – land, sea or air – at double the speeds of this US test vehicle. Moreover, they are now testing unstoppable weapon systems capable of three times that speed – Mach 15. See this video…
It is known that a weapon with such characteristics as claimed for the recent US test (which was also described in more detail in Deutsche Welle along with lies on Russian efforts and much typical bluster on Western capabilities – giving the impression that this whole story is a fig-leaf strategically placed to cover Western embarrassment) was developed by the Soviet Union back in the ’80s of the last century – meaning that the declared achievement is at least three decades behind the times. See this article by ‘Top War’ – a Russian military review site which I have to say is new to me – from October 2016 – ‘In Russia, tested hypersonic missile “product 4202″‘. The Soviet era project, variously also labelled as ‘Object 4202’ is now realised (actually in service as part of Russia’s air defence since 2019) as the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, with claimed speeds up to Mach 27 – and the Russians, unlike others, do not generally overstate their capabilities. There is no reliance on ‘animations’ for Russian weapon systems, only real action images and video. This from, I assume, RT America…
It is good to know that the adults, not the juveniles, are currently in charge of the gun locker – and that it will stay that way.
I want, finally, to give some definition of what Mach numbers represent, and I can find no more clear exposition of that (I didn’t say it was ‘scientific’) than this simple explanation from Quora…
For those of sufficient interest – What is a mach number?
Dummies version…
Incidentally, and finally finally, if you see the word ‘Max’ in any of the links in this post, followed or preceded by a number, it is the Russian word for Mach. And, no, it is not the word ‘max’ – as in the highest level, or even the plural of ‘Mach’ (which has no plural) – whimsically, you can’t hold a Mach in each hand and say “I have two Max”. Also, the ‘M’ and the ‘a’ in Max are roughly the equivalent of the same English letters, but there is no equivalent to the English letter ‘X’ or ‘x’ (which usually has a ‘zzz’ sound) in Russian Cyrillic. ‘X’ or ‘x’ in Russian is pronounced ‘ch’ as in ‘loch’ (or ‘Mach’) – or so I am led to believe. So it is essentially the same word with the same sound.
Ok, I’m done here.
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