{"id":175477,"date":"2022-03-23T20:42:47","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T15:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=175477"},"modified":"2022-03-23T20:42:47","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T15:12:47","slug":"understanding-hypersonic-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/understanding-hypersonic-weapons\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding hypersonic weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h5><b>What is the News?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Russian Ministry of Defense has announced that it had used a hypersonic missile for the first time in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What are Hypersonic weapons?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-175478 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/1EF0FFBC-DAE1-4B30-A569-DC3364824B10_w650_r0_s.png?resize=650%2C394&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/1EF0FFBC-DAE1-4B30-A569-DC3364824B10_w650_r0_s.png?w=650&amp;ssl=1 650w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/1EF0FFBC-DAE1-4B30-A569-DC3364824B10_w650_r0_s.png?resize=300%2C182&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hypersonic missiles are manoeuvrable weapons that fly at least at the speed of Mach 5 i.e. five times the speed of sound.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Note<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: The speed of sound is Mach 1 and speeds above Mach 1 are supersonic and speeds above Mach 5 are hypersonic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>How are Hypersonic weapons different from Ballistic Missiles?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p>Ballistic Missiles <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">travel much faster. But they follow a fixed trajectory and travel outside the atmosphere to re-enter only near impact.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hypersonic weapons travel within the atmosphere and can manoeuvre midway. They can travel at high speeds, thus making their detection and interception extremely difficult. I.e., Radar and air defences cannot detect them till they are very close and have only a little time to react.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What are the types of Hypersonic weapons?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are two types of hypersonic weapons systems. <strong>1)<\/strong> <strong>Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGV)<\/strong>: These are launched from a rocket before gliding to the intended target, 2) <strong>Hypersonic Cruise Missiles<\/strong>: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are powered by air-breathing high-speed engines or \u2018scramjets\u2019 after acquiring their target.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Which countries possess Hypersonic weapons?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Russia has announced its hypersonic missile \u2018Kinzhal\u2019 or Dagger in 2018 and has now used it for the first time in battle conditions in Ukraine. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">China is also said to have tested a Hypersonic weapon in 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US has also tested hypersonic weapons for decades. However, U.S. hypersonic development programmes are lagging behind China and Russia because most U.S. hypersonic weapons are not being designed for use with a nuclear warhead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Apart from these countries, a number of other countries including Australia, India, France, Germany, and Japan \u2014 are also developing hypersonic weapons technology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>About the Indian hypersonic missile programme<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India operates approximately 12 hypersonic wind tunnels and is capable of testing speeds of up to Mach 13.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India is also developing an indigenous, dual-capable hypersonic cruise missile as part of its <strong>Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle(HSTDV) programme<\/strong> and successfully tested a Mach 6 scramjet in 2019 and 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A hypersonic version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, joint development of India and Russia, is also under development.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The post is based on an article<\/span><b> \u201c<\/b><b>Understanding hypersonic weapons<\/b><b>\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">published in <\/span><b>The Hindu <\/b>on <b>23rd March 2022<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the News? The Russian Ministry of Defense has announced that it had used a hypersonic missile for the first time in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine.\u00a0 What are Hypersonic weapons? Hypersonic missiles are manoeuvrable weapons that fly at least at the speed of Mach 5 i.e. five times the speed of sound. Note:&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/understanding-hypersonic-weapons\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Understanding hypersonic weapons<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,1738,9],"tags":[10498],"class_list":["post-175477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-science-and-technology-daily-factly-articles","category-public","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}