Military Aircraft Hit Mach 20 Before Ocean Crash, DARPA Says (opens in new tab)

This is what all guns do.

Kinetic Bombardment has been a sci-fi concept for decades, and it's interesting to see a real, possibly cost effective, technology that could make it real. At those speeds, you don't need explosives, just a lot of mass to slam into something.

meteors!

A Thor style pure kinetic weapon was supposed to impact at around Mach 10, but this is a scram jet and as such should be able to maintain a significantly higher speed. Granted it's unlikely to maintain that at sea level, but it sounds like it impacted the water reasonably intact and so could probably do a powered dive. Also, around mach 9 is the break-even point where high explosives have more kinetic energy than chemical energy so even if it hit's at say mach 12 that's still a lot of energy.

Of course and that would've been the sensible thing to do. As Americans, we want a world where the U.S. is the one that has this technology, not countries who aren't the U.S. Our standard of living (1/4 of the world's resources for 5% of the world's population) literally depends on that state of affairs.

Crazy, first thing I did was google how far it is to Tehran (albiet I'm Iranian). Seems like 30mins from New york at mach 20.

They can't, if you launch the thing on top of something that looks like a nuclear ICBM and follows a ballistic flight path like a nuclear ICBM does. If that happens, the person on the other end is likely to jump to the conclusion that it is a nuclear ICBM, even if you insist it isn't. Which puts them on the spot to launch their own nukes, if they have any, before yours arrives. This "discrimination" problem has been a big one for the Prompt Global Strike program since its inception.

The vehicle in the story is part of the Air Force's attempt to solve this problem, by delivering the PGS payload via a spaceplane that flies in a flatter suborbital trajectory rather than an ICBM's higher trajectory. This is supposed to make it clear to the people on the other side that whatever has just been launched at them is not a nuke. It's unclear how successful this would be, though, since the spaceplane still has to be launched on a missile (possibly triggering any missile-launch early warning systems the opposition has), and nobody knows if in the heat of a crisis different angles of trajectory would be sufficient to reassure an anxious decisionmaker that they're not witnessing the beginning of a nuclear first strike.

Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VqiPhsnMM&feature=youtu...

As "open" as DARPA is they are subject to confidentiality and are only allowed to disclose what the DoD allows them to disclose. I am no conspiracy theorist but compare the shape/light of the aircraft in my video to the artist night time rendition from the OP article. Even if the aircraft in my video is different, I can tell you I have never seen anything anywhere near as fast as the aircraft in my video including F-15's, F-16's, F-18's or the space shuttle when it lands (which breaks the sound barrier at very low altitude).

until now

You're right it's not a ballistic missile, but it's end goal is in many ways the same:

"Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is a United States military effort to develop a system that can deliver a precision conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world within one hour, in a similar manner to a nuclear ICBM"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike

You do know that Russia and China are both permanent security council members, so what you describe - bullying Russia and China into taking a position on this they do not want to take - is not possible?

Maybe this is cold war style thinking on my part but if I were China I would think to myself "yes, United States, please keep building that phenomenally expensive conventional weapon that would be really dangerous against the kind of surface fleet you have but we don't. That's a really... great... strategy you've got there." While publicly protesting against it, of course.

The "gradual wearing of the vehicle's skin" is called is called ablation.

Its a standard way both hyper sonic and reentry vehicles manage heat. Basically the skin boils off creating a pressure wave that the vehicle flights behind.

Wikipedia has a good description of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry#Ablative

As I understand, you can't hit those speeds with just a rocket engine. The HTV-2 is considered a rocket glider - it needs a rocket to propel it to altitudes and speeds where the SCRAMJET can kick in (as the scramjet itself has no moving parts).

Missiles can be shot down by state actors, non-state actors can hide deep in areas which are out of range of the U.S. or its allies. But launching anything on an ICBM makes it almost impossible for other nations to distinguish from a nuclear missile launch.

Of course, if Prompt Global Strike is capable of carrying cargo with it then maybe countries like Russia or China would suspect it can also carry a small nuclear warhead, so it may be that concern doesn't completely go away.