According to Online military magazine Defense Blog China successfully test-fire hypersonic aircraft
The China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics has released photographs showing first guided flight test of the newest hypersonic aircraft, also called wave rider.
Waverider is a hypersonic aircraft that have the wedge-shaped fuselage that improves its supersonic lift-to-drag ratio by using the shock waves being generated by its own flight as a lifting surface.
According to the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, at 6:41 am on August 3, at the northwest test range was held successfully test-fired of new Star Air-2 waverider aircraft system.
The hypersonic aircraft was successfully completed active phase, jettison of aerodynamic payload fairing, autonomous and high maneuvering turning in 10 minutes’ flight.
CAAA successfully test flew waverider hypersonic flight vehicle 星空/Sky star-2 in the northwest test range on Friday morning, the rocket completed active phase turning, stage/fairing separation, flight vehicle autonomous flight and high maneuvering turning in 10 minutes' flight. pic.twitter.com/LhR3OrJuRy
— dafeng cao (@dafengcao) August 3, 2018
The hypersonic aircraft was successfully completed active phase, jettison of aerodynamic payload fairing, autonomous and high maneuverWaveriders are a hypersonic aircraft design using the shock waves generated by their own flight as a lifting surface to improve their lift-to-drag ratio.
Carrying a conventional or nuclear payload or simply using the immense kinetic energy unleashed by their flight to destroy their targets, the maneuverable high-speed systems can evade any existing or prospective countermeasures. Russia is expected to deploy its Avangard hypersonic boost-glide vehicle aboard the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile by late 2018 or early 2019.
The US has its own projects in this direction, most notably its Boeing X-51 unmanned scramjet aircraft. In May, the US Air Force announced that it was accelerating the development of its hypersonic weapons projects to catch up with Russia and China.
Earlier this week, strategic weapons experts spotted what they believed to be testing of the CH-AS-X-13, a new Chinese two-stage solid-fuel ballistic missile with a 3,000 km range
The Aerospace Exploration Institute of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation presented this wave rider as the first hypersonic test aircraft in the aerodynamic layout of the wave body.
Waveriders are aircraft bodies shaped to skim along the top of the pressure wave created by their own supersonic flight — in essence, using the shock wave to increase the plane’s lift, or the upward force that keeps a plane in flight.
