Blasting The Air In Front Of Hypersonic Vehicles With Lasers Could Unlock Unprecedented Speeds

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Blasting The Air In Front Of Hypersonic Vehicles With Lasers Could Unlock Unprecedented Speeds

For decades, the DoD has been researching a radical drag reduction technique that involves sheathing a vehicle in directed energy-induced plasma.

By Brett Tingley

Updated

Nov 27, 2020 6:25 PM EST

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Over the last decade, two of the most significant topics in defense research and development have been directed energy systems and hypersonic weapons. The Department of Defense and its major contractors have been pushing the boundaries of what is possible with these technologies and those efforts could someday soon literally change the face of warfare forever.

As it turns out, these two cutting edge areas of defense research are beginning to converge in laboratories with the goal of enabling unprecedented levels of speed for aerial weapons. By combining advanced directed energy technology with the latest in hypersonic vehicle design, researchers in private and Department of Defense (DoD) funded laboratories have laid the groundwork for systems designed to literally sheathe an entire vehicle in laser and/or microwave-induced plasma in order to drastically reduce drag. If successfully developed, this concept may someday lead to new frontiers in speed and radical new forms of aerodynamic control and aircraft design.

The Rapidly Evolving Hypersonic Landscape

As the world’s military superpowers jockey for position in a new arms race, hypersonic technologies have been pushed to the forefront of defense and aerospace research. These vehicles and weapons represent a true leap-ahead capability, enabling flight speeds that can outpace even the most advanced and robust air defense systems. It’s one thing to intercept and destroy a ballistic missile falling on an arcing path, but it’s another thing entirely to attempt to intercept a projectile moving at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound while executing abrupt changes in trajectory. It’s no surprise that hypersonic systems are becoming integral to the United States’ military’s future strategy in key theaters such as the Indo-Pacific region.

The need for hypersonic weapons has evolved alongside the parallel evolution of missile defense systems. As integrated sensor networks and missile defenses continue to become more sophisticated and adept, developing weapon delivery systems capable of evading or bypassing defenses with extreme speed has become paramount to ensuring global battlefield dominance and conventional deterrence. To that end, and to keep up with foreign advances, the USAF and other branches of the DoD have been investing vast sums of money into hypersonic research and development in recent years.

That R&D has already led to several systems approaching operational status. The USAF and Lockheed Martin are working on the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), a boost-glide hypersonic system that is claimed to be able to achieve speeds up to Mach 20. The wedge-shaped ARRW has been tested in captive flights on a B-52 Stratofortress and is expected to be operational by 2022. Meanwhile, the Army and Navy, in conjunction with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), have tested their own hypersonic delivery system, the Common Hypersonic Glide Body vehicle, or C-HGB. There are a number of other initiatives underway as well, including air-breathing hypersonic cruise missile designs, such as HAWC, and a multitude of classified efforts.

A Lockheed Martin-built AGM-183 ARRW (Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon) hypersonic missile during a captive flight test aboard a USAF B-52. , USAF

As with all hypersonic systems, drag and the resulting thermal stresses of extremely high-speed flight are two of the biggest hurdles faced by these vehicles. Even with advanced geometry, extreme levels of heat are generated by friction on the skin of high-speed craft, which can potentially degrade the structural integrity of the airframe and damage internal components, potentially even in a catastrophic fashion.

One of the ways of...