Hypersonic military aircraft crashes into pacific

DARPA Hypersonic Military Aircraft Crashes into Pacific Ocean…Again.

An unnamed hypersonic glider (let’s just call it the new tomahawk missile) was recently developed and launched by DARPA: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The military and NASA have joined together to develop the hypersonic technology which is capable of flying at speeds of Mach 5 or greater. Apparently Supersonic wasn’t fast enough for the government so they had to move up to hypersonic. Next is obviously Ludicrous Speed – top secret project name “Spaceballs”.

The DARPA Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV)-2 is a prototype that launches on a rocket, reaches suborbital space and then re-enters Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of about Mach 20. The vehicle is part of DARPA’s Global Strike test program to check technologies for a global bomber.  The object is shaped like an arrowhead (or missile tip), and is part of a U.S. military agenda to develop technology that can respond to threats at mach 20. This means it would be able to  reach any part of the globe in an hour.

So they’re intentions for this new technology are strictly for defensive measures only. Sure.

It’s built in response to missiles becoming faster and longer ranging. This way if someone launches a missile at our country we can launch a faster missile at that missile to cut it off before it reaches it target. Missile on Missile crime! Only problem is we’ve been broadcasting the development of this technology all over the world on Twitter so the everyone knows we have it. Anyone think the military is terrible at poker? It’s called tipping your cards dumbasses, and maybe this technology should’ve been a secret. For all the information we want our government to broadcast, they pick this one; alerting the potential attackers that we’re bringing a gun to a knife fight. Now our enemies know what to expect and can properly prepare if they want to launch a missile. That’s so old fashion of us to have a fair fight, hope the terrorist return the favor. If Kim Jong Il is as big a Twitter fan as he is of Hennessy, then we may be in trouble.

So what’s to keep our enemies from weaponizing this technology after their spies steal it from DAPRA? Well for starters we can’t get it to work. The most recent launch which happened this week, failed after nine minutes and crashed into the ocean. The first launch in April 2010 followed a very similar failure. After 9 minutes of flight and reaching speeds up to 22 times the speed of light, the craft detected an anomaly, aborted it’s mission and plunged into the ocean.

“We know how to boost the aircraft to near space,” said Air Force Major Chris Schulz of Darpa. “We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It’s vexing; I’m confident there is a solution. We have to find it.

“Darpa has assembled a team of experts that will analyze the flight data collected during today’s test flight, expanding our technical understanding of this incredibly harsh flight regime. As today’s flight indicates, high-Mach flight in the atmosphere is virtually uncharted territory.”

Maybe we should give the technology to the Chinese, I’m sure they can figure it out. Ludicrous Speed!