Anyone who is highly concerned about my country's aerospace and various armaments fields knows that the various public papers and journals in the system are the best and fastest way to understand the progress of related projects; the performance of the new missile new aircraft You can find many answers by looking through journals. Therefore, not only our military fans like to look for clues about the development of our military's new equipment in these professional journals, but now some foreign experts and open source intelligence analysts who are concerned about the development of our military have also learned to analyze relevant academic publications in our country. of this set.
For example, in the past two days, experts from the Indian media "Eurasia Times" found some interesting things from the "Journal of Aeronautics and Astronautics": about my country's new progress in the hypersonic aircraft . Our country has successfully developed an unmanned principle prototype of a hypersonic aircraft, which weighs about 500 kilograms. This small-scale unmanned aerial vehicle is certainly not a highlight, but as a principle verification project for a Mach 6 hypersonic passenger aircraft, this project is Very interesting. According to the plan, after completing the test of the principle prototype, the successfully verified technology will be used to design and manufacture a hypersonic passenger aircraft that can carry about 10 passengers and conduct long-duration Mach 6 flights, greatly shortening the long-distance travel time of time-sensitive passengers. Travel time required to reach the world within hours.
According to this paper found by Indian , my country's newly developed hypersonic aircraft principle prototype uses a set of quite complex combined engines: the turbofan engine is responsible for the low-speed section, It is composed of a sub-combustion ramjet engine responsible for acceleration, and the scramjet engine as the main power, covering different speed ranges and responsible for different purposes; according to the test data, this set of turbofans is responsible for Mach 2 and below, Asia The mode where the combustion press is responsible for accelerating to Mach 4, and then the super-combustion press is used to maintain battery life, is quite useful in improving efficiency.
To be honest, it is difficult to evaluate the value of hypersonic passenger aircraft now. After all, all supersonic passenger aircraft plans of mankind from ancient times to the present are not considered successful. Even the Concorde project is far from achieving the achievements he envisioned. . The same is true for this Mach 6 passenger aircraft. The 2% payload level and the high energy consumption brought by hypersonic speeds mean that the travel cost will be unacceptably high; the operational restrictions of commercial airports also mean that the suitable scenarios are quite limited. Not to mention the price that needs to be paid to extend the range to the range where hypersonic flight can show its advantages; if you want to make an aircraft to showcase our current advanced technology and aviation industry capabilities, that is very good. But as a purely commercial project, it may be more appropriate to stay at the technical verification stage.
Therefore, Indians’ interest in such a hypersonic passenger aircraft itself and the degree of threat they feel are quite limited. In contrast, Indians are still more concerned about the future of this aircraft for militarization. After all, this kind of aircraft that can carry one ton of people and cargo and fly a considerable distance at a speed of Mach 6 is indeed much more valuable in military terms than its civilian use, which is of little significance, and there is not much in between. Technical barriers can be achieved through simple redesign; in this way, the category of hypersonic weapons will change from single-use missiles in the past to reusable aircraft.
From a military perspective, the future of hypersonic aircraft is indeed quite broad. Whether it is used as a strike aircraft, an interceptor aircraft or a reconnaissance aircraft, it has a very good future, especially for various types of aircraft. Time-sensitive tasks can greatly improve performance. As a reconnaissance aircraft and a strike aircraft, it can arrive at the location to complete the mission as soon as possible, improve combat effectiveness and greatly improve survivability; as an interceptor , it can also arrive faster Intercept position to complete the interception before the opponent poses a threat.
The key is that this kind of hypersonic aircraft is recyclable and reusable as an aircraft, which greatly improves the applicable combat range of hypersonic operations; after all, currently hypersonic weapons are still in the missile stage. When we say that hypersonic passenger aircraft are not cost-effective and the market is small, we are talking about passenger aircraft; the hypersonic missile now costs more than 10 million yuan a shot like the cheap Dongfeng-17, and the higher-end ones are much more expensive. This kind of hypersonic missile starts with more than 10,000 rounds, and its projection capacity is only a warhead of more than half a ton or a special reconnaissance cabin. This high cost means that the hypersonic missile can only be used to hit limited high-altitude targets in limited scenarios. value goals.
But hypersonic military aircraft are different. No matter how high the cost of this thing is compared to civil aviation, it is still cheap compared to missiles because it can be used multiple times. The cost of one Dongfeng-17 is enough to achieve hypersonic speed based on this principle. The fighter jet flew back and forth several times, projecting a warhead equivalent several times that of the Dongfeng-17, or detecting far more targets than the Dongfeng-17 reconnaissance bomb. This greatly expands the scope of hypersonic strikes from a cost-effective perspective. In the past, it was not worth using the expensive and limited ammunition preparation of hypersonic missiles, but targets that need to be eliminated quickly can now use this Mach 6 Combination power bombers are here to solve it.
Obviously, this is the most valuable and promising direction for aircraft based on this principle. Compared with flying all over the northern hemisphere in two hours, it can shorten the timeliness of strike missions to one-third or even one-third of the original. It would be much more effective to reach any interception position in a shorter time, or within 20 minutes. Moreover, the expanded hypersonic combat range can also comprehensively improve all aspects of combat effectiveness, which is a very promising research direction. Obviously, we will not just put this technology on civilian passenger aircraft. Hypersonic combat aircraft will definitely be something we can see in the near future; and this is also what Indians are most worried about.
