New Russian Bomber 'Will Not be Hypersonic'

Russia's future PAK-DA manned bomber project will not have hypersonic speed capability, Russia's bomber force commander said on Wednesday, in an apparent contradiction of claims by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin earlier this year.

"PAK-DA, currently under development, will not be hypersonic," Lt. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev.

The first prototpe PAK-DA is due to enter service around 2020, he added.

Hypersonic speeds are high supersonic, usually referring to Mach five and above, which can usually only be generated using advanced propulsion technology such as ramjet or scramjet engines. No manned aircraft has yet been flown using such technologies, which are on the cutting edge of aerospace know-how.

Zhikharev's statement follows a protracted exchange in the media between senior air force officers, including himself, and Rogozin, who has special responsibility for the arms industry, over what shape PAK-DA should take.

Rogozin repeated in August an earlier appeal for Russia to develop a hypersonic aircraft for its PAK-DA long-range bomber requirement.

"I think we need to go down the route of hypersonic technology and we are moving in that direction and are not falling behind the Americans," he said on Rossiya 24 TV. "We will use this technology when developing a new bomber."

In June, President Vladimir Putin ordered initial development of the new long-range bomber for strategic aviation. Speaking during a conference on defense orders, Putin said: "We have to develop work on the new PAK-DA long-range bomber aircraft for Long-Range Aviation. The task is not easy from a scientific-technical standpoint, but we need to start work."

Rogozin initially said in June he saw no need for PAK-DA to replace the air force's aging Tu-95MS cruise-missile carriers and Tu-160 supersonic bombers.

“These aircraft will not get anywhere. Not ours, not theirs,” he said in an interview with Izvestia that month. He later clarified his statement by saying he was in favor of developing a future bomber, but it should not just be a copy of the serving US Northrop B-2 and should employ hypersonic technology.

In May, he called on Russia's defense industry to develop hypersonic air-breathing weapons as a future strike system. He cited American development work in the X-51, Falcon, HiFire and HyFly hypersonic programs as examples of what he described as the perspective threat posed by U.S. hypersonic development work.

Some aerospace analysts RIA Novosti has previously spoken to say Rogozin's comments are more likely to be relevant to a future air-launched missile, rather than the bomber that launches it.

US Military close to developing Hypersonic bombers

Washington: US is close to developing a hypersonic bomber able to reach any target on the globe in under an hour.

The US military hopes to fly such hypersonic planes capable of moving at 20 times the speed of sound by 2016, the NBC News reported quoting American officials working on the project.

The vehicle would be "recoverable", US government officials working on developing the full-scale rocket plane said.

The hypersonic bomber codenamed the X-Plane will travel at Mach 20 (roughly 20,900 kilometers per hour) and the project is being carried out by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has developed stealth aircrafts for US government for 30 years.

DARPA has conducted two test flights of prototype hypersonic aircraft in the past two years. In August last year, the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) reached Mach 20, but only remained airborne for nine minutes.

The HTV-2 was developed in conjunction with the advanced Conventional Prompt Global Strike weapons programme with the goal of creating a bomber able to reach any target on the globe in under an hour.

The US government has started a new programme called Integrated Hypersonics with an aim to develop ultra-fast fighters and the project is in response to the US military advantage being threatened by other nations' increasing abilities in stealth and counter-stealth warfare.

"We do not yet have a complete hypersonic system solution," said Gregory Hulcher, director of strategic warfare at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said in a statement.

"Programme like Integrated Hypersonics will leverage previous investments in this field and continue to reduce risk, inform development and advance capabilities."

The programme's research will focus on five key areas: thermal protection system and hot structures; aerodynamics; guidance, navigation and control (GNC); range/instrumentation; and propulsion. Thermal protection is a crucial issue for hypersonic flight, which is defined as anything over Mach 5. A vehicle flying inside the atmosphere at Mach 20 would experience temperatures in excess of 1920 degrees Celsius - hot enough to melt steel. The project will also aim to improve design and manufacturing processes, in order to able faster production.

Turkish airplane Hürkuş rolls out

This photo shows a prototype of the Turkish Air Industry’s first military civilian use airplane Hürkuş, which is being launched today. Hürkuş is a pilot training plane.

The Turkish Air Industry’s (TAI) first military civilian use airplane Hürkuş (free bird) will roll out today with a ceremony. The TAI will make a show of its productions by flying Turkish UAV ANKA and the T-129 attack helicopter for the first time in front of public. The ceremony will take place on the anniversary of the approval of the law on the foundation of the company in 1984.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is scheduled to observe the vehicles - as well as the Hürkuş.

Hürkuş, a pilot trainer plane, will be demonstrated to the public for the first time at the event. The plane is expected to be ready to fly within a year and will also be shown to the audience at the Farnborough International Air Show.

The aircraft will be used to execute basic pilot training, instrument flying, navigation training, and weapons and formation training missions. Hürkuş is expected to be exported as a civilian and military flight trainer aircraft.

The first Hürkuş prototype will carry civilian use specifications. It is built adhering to the EASA CS 23 standards. Upcoming prototypes will have military standards. The last and most developed version of Hürkuş will carry weapons in the future. The development program of the Hürkuş began in March 2006 as part of the contract signed between the SSM and the TAI. The agreement covered four aircraft to be designed, built, examined, verified and certified by the TAI. The aircraft was named after Turkey’s first aviator Vecihi Hürkuş. Hürkuş’s daughter will participate in the ceremony, and her parents are expected to fly from U.S. in order to attend ceremony.

Tandem cockpit

Hürkuş has an analog and digital cockpit with a tandem seat configuration for two crew members - a student pilot and an instructor. The next configuration will be a glass cockpit. TAI engineers are very proud of cockpit as it is thin enough to easily break in case of emergency for the exit of emergency seat but it is strong enough to protect the pilot in the event of bird crash at the speed of 300 km/h.

In 2007 it was forecasted that the first prototype would fly in late-2009 with first delivery, upon completion of the certification process, forecast for 2011. The date for the first flight is not known yet, as TAI authorities say they can not predict how the EASA certification would be processed.

Third X-51 hypersonic test vehicle to fly soon

A third Boeing X-51 hypersonic test vehicle will fly shortly, a senior company official says.

"We're planning to fly another vehicle shortly," says Joe Vogel, Boeing's hypersonics director. The test vehicle will fly as soon as the government gives its assent. "It'll be this year."

That would be the missile-like test vehicle's third flight. Two earlier tests successfully demonstrated hypersonic flight, but the air vehicles did not fly for as long a duration as was expected.

"I consider it successful," Vogel says of the truncated previous flights.

Vogel notes that the first flight set a world record for duration at hypersonic speed while the second flight ended with a controlled landing into the ocean.

There is also a fourth test vehicle available to the programme. If the third flight proves to be completely successful, that remaining test article could be used for materials testing or testing different flight profiles, Vogel says.

Boeing is working on the supersonic combustion ram jet, or scramjet, with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), US Air Force Research Laboratory and Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne.

If successful, the endeavor could yield new missiles, aircraft and space-launch vehicles, Vogel says. A flight from New York to Los Angeles could take less 39 minutes at Mach 5, he adds.