India’s Hypersonic Duality
India has become the fourth country – after the United States, Russia and China – to inch towards operationalisation of scramjet-based hypersonic vehicles. On 7th September 2020, India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successfully tested the air-breathing scramjet engine of the Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HSTDV) mounted on a proven first-stage solid-fuel rocket engine. The HSTDV, after separation from the first stage at an altitude of 30 kilometres, went hypersonic, above Mach 7, for more than 20 seconds. This test has come at a time when India’s peaceful economic growth and growing international stature are making both Pakistan and China bellicose against it. This is not the first occasion when India has gone hypersonic. The DRDO and its industrial partners have already productionized solid-fuel ballistic hypersonic missiles. The Shaurya is a two-stage solid-fuel ballistic missile that achieves hypersonic speeds in its terminal stage of surface-to-surface flight, reaching Mach 7.5. The Pradyumna ballistic missile, part of the Prithvi Air Defence System, is also capable of attaining hypersonic speeds of up to Mach 5. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) also has a hypersonic vehicle in its store. The first test of ISRO’s Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), which took place in 2016, was called the Hypersonic Flight Experiment. The RLV-TD space-plane was taken to a high altitude of around 65 km as the second stage of a conventional Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) booster and then was released to descend back to the surface, owing to gravity, at hypersonic speeds of around Mach 5. In the coming months, ISRO plans to evaluate the scramjet engine on the RLV-TD, which will enable it to reach higher Mach numbers.
The international contest for hypersonic vehicles has intensified in both the two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) and single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) space-plane technology realms. Unlike the air-breathing scramjet ‘cruise’ vehicles, SSTO and TSTO space-planes have air-breathing scramjet ‘accelerators’ that equip them to escape Earth’s gravitational clutches swiftly. Reusable space planes also experience extremely high Mach numbers (>20) as they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on their way to the surface. The U.S. has already undertaken numerous clandestine flights of its Boeing X-37 TSTO space plane in Earth’s orbit in May 2020. The now space-proven X-37 is said to be operating at extremely high hypersonic speeds, up to Mach 25. China claims to have undertaken an orbital test, between 4th and 6th September 2020, of its spaceplane that has long gone by the name of Shenlong. However, it was unable to provide any validation of the space plane before or after the flight. Be that as it may, between space-planes and weapons, the hypersonic scramjet contest is truly heating up in the weapons domain, and there’s a reason for it. Today, dense and precise air defence systems can easily intercept conventional subsonic ballistic and cruise missiles. This absence of deterrence is compelling militaries equipped with robust R&D backbones to develop scramjet-based hypersonic missiles with significantly lower detection signatures than their conventional counterparts. Advantageously, hypersonic scramjet vehicles also fly at lower altitudes, evading ground-based radars and making their detection extremely difficult over longer distances. The paradigm shift from conventional fuel to scramjet-based hypersonic missiles is also triggering the evolution of air-defence systems. The shift is compelling the advancement of the entire air-defence kill chain from finding, fixing, tracking, targeting, engaging, and assessing – better known as F2T2EA in defence-technology communes – the incoming missile or projectile. Given these advancements, the other three countries in this first-movers club have fast-tracked operationalisation of scramjet-based hypersonic weapons in the past year.
China announced the operationalisation of the Dongfeng-ZF, a scramjet-powered hypersonic glide vehicle tipped on the Dongfeng-17, during their 2019 Military Day Parade. This was followed by the Russian Strategic Missile Troops operationalising the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle tipped on the UR-100N missile on 27th December 2019. A few months later, on March 19, 2020, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency successfully tested the Common-Hypersonic Glide Body, which was also mounted on a modified version of the retired Polaris missile, now known as the Strategic Target System (STARS). In the past year, several geopolitical hotspots have begun to flare up, including Tibet, Taiwan, Gilgit-Baltistan, the East China Sea, the Levant, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf. Russia and the United States realise that any skewing of the equilibrium will lead to blazing of these hotspots. Therefore, to continue with their mutual détente, in April 2020, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov initiated a conversation with the U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to bring hypersonic vehicles under the ambit of the revised version of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which will succeed the current one that expires on 5th February 2021. The current treaty is largely limited to delivery systems that include both UR-100N and Polaris, but does not include hypersonic payloads or warheads. Whether hypersonic vehicles are treated as delivery systems or warheads in the next revision of the New START is yet to be seen. The Trump Administration intends to invite China to be part of the revised START, but the latter has not expressed spirit or eagerness. New Delhi has prudently chosen to develop hypersonic in a dual-use manner, one civilian – as space-plane – and the other military – as a missile weapon. This dual-use capability will give New Delhi the leverage to deal with its two belligerent neighbours, while also being ready to develop arms-reduction agreements. However, first, it should utilise the hypersonic duality to counter the looming and grave threat perception in the subcontinent emanating from the Sino-Pak axis.
The original piece was published in NewsBharati.
