Counter-Hypersonic Program Enters Next Phase.

• Author: Carberry, Sean

* The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, racing to enable technologies to defend against hypersonic weapons, has entered the second phase of its Glide Breaker counter-hypersonic program.

Like Patriot, or other current anti-missile systems, the aim of Glide Breaker is to take down a hypersonic weapon in flight by guiding a kill vehicle directly into the oncoming weapon. Given the speed and maneuverability of hypersonic weapons, the task of striking one in glide phase is far more complex than taking out an oncoming ballistic missile.

"The ballistic threat is not maneuvering ... and you don't have this air flow around the overall body," said Maj. Nathan Greiner, DARPA program manager for Glide Breaker.

The speed, altitude, jet interactions and other dynamics of striking down a hypersonic are novel. "We, simply put, do not have a very large data set to help us understand these things," he said in an interview.

Unlike the "gobs" of data on existing flight technologies, when it comes to counter-hypersonic flight, "there's almost nothing for us to base our scientific understanding on," he said.

Launched in 2018, Glide Breaker's first phase--awarded to Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman--focused on developing a "divert and attitude control system" necessary for a kill vehicle to intercept and destroy a highly maneuverable hypersonic weapon in glide.

DARPAs April 14 Broad Agency Announcement for phase 2 seeks proposals to conduct wind-tunnel and flight testing to gather data on endo-atmospheric effects--the impact of jet interactions between the divert and attitude control system and hypersonic crossflow, and how that affects controlling and maneuvering the kill vehicle, said Greiner.

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