"Science knows no borders, scientists have borders!"
On April 9, the South China Morning Post reported an article about the reasons for the repeated miscarriages of hypersonic weapons in the United States.
The article shows that the main factor is also due to problems with the parameters in the simulation software developed by NASA.
I believe that the United States also learned the relevant news for the first time, but I did not expect that the United States, which has always been leading the world, would be slapped in the face by mainland scientists.
But what is even more puzzling is why this kind of thing should be told to the United States so early?
Isn't it a better option to keep using this information gap to delay the progress of the United States and consume the US military spending?
Is science really borderless? Or is it intentional?
"The world's martial arts, only fast is not broken"
Since the United States reaped the dividends of World War II, it has been in a leading position in the world in terms of military and science and technology.
Since 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense has requested $2.6 billion from Congress to develop a new generation of hypersonic weapons.
And this purpose is also to deal with the research and development of hypersonic weapons between China and Russia.
However, at present, the United States has not made effective progress in the development of hypersonic weapons, and three successive test launches have been frequently aborted.
Tracing the history of the development of hypersonic weapons, the earliest is the Second World War.
When testing the heavy large-caliber train gun K5, Germany found that it would be fired at a higher altitude than at a lower altitude.
Based on this theory, it was speculated that when a weapon reaches an extremely high speed and rushes into the atmosphere at a specific angle, it can glide through the atmosphere.
If the atmosphere is likened to ocean waves, then the weapon is a surfboard, which in perfect condition never falls into the water.
Later, this message was seized by the United States, and Qian Xuesen, who was still a colonel in the US Army at the time, put forward a different view.
He believes that as long as there is a standard thermal protection technology, it is enough to keep the aircraft flying.
This concept proposed by Qian Xuesen is also known as "Qian Xuesen ballistic." ”
Based on this concept, the Bumper5 two-stage rocket developed by the United States in 1949 had a speed of up to 6.7MH (6.7 times the speed of sound)
After theoretical updates and iterations, the United States applied this technology to airplanes in 1961.
As a result, the "North American X-15" was developed, which can reach a maximum speed of 7274 kilometers per hour, close to 7MH.
This is enough to establish the leading position of the United States in the development of hypersonic weapons.
However, after entering the 21st century, the United States continued to make various attempts at hypersonic weapons, but the technology was updated very slowly.
And the flight experiments of the X-51A, independently developed by the United States, have also failed many times, which has made Congress very disappointed with hypersonic weapons.
Russia currently has three types of hypersonic missiles, namely "Dagger", "Avangard" and "Zircon";
The fastest Pioneer missile can reach a maximum speed of nearly 20 MH and reach the United States in about 15 minutes.
At the same time, Russia is also the first country to use hypersonic weapons in actual combat, and there is no one at present.
Just above the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, in March 2022, Russian MiG fighter jets carrying "Daggers" destroyed an underground weapons depot in Ukraine.
The next day, the "Dagger" was again used to strike a fuel depot on the territory of Ukraine.
Having seen the effect of the strike, Russia then did not throw the "Dagger" into the battlefield.
The mainland has also gained valuable experience from the actual combat in Russia.
While the United States is vigorously developing hypersonic weapons, it has not forgotten to block the continent on the roads.
Although it started relatively late, the mainland has also accumulated valuable experience in the development of exciting warheads.
In 2017, the continent successfully test-fired the "Dongfeng-17" hypersonic missile and achieved remarkable results.
The missiles of the Dongfeng series have also been compared by netizens to "Dongfeng Express." ”
The precision and flight speed of Dongfeng Express have brought serious challenges to the anti-missile systems of some countries.
This has also made the US "Aegis" and the "THAAD" deployed in South Korea gradually reduce the level of threat.
"Something went wrong with the software"
So far, China and Russia have long prepared hypersonic missiles.
Russia has also dropped such missiles on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield.
In addition, North Korea and Iran have claimed to have mastered the ability to develop hypersonic weapons.
The United States, which likes to meddle in everything, has disappeared at this time.
However, as early as the last century, the United States used hypersonic weapons on manned rockets early.
According to the accumulation of experience, the development progress of the United States should only be fast, not slow.
At the same time, NASA has also developed a Vulcan-CFD software for this time.
What Americans didn't expect was that it was this software that went wrong.
Chinese scientists have found that some of the simulated scenarios in the Vulcan-CFD software simulation are different from reality.
This will also affect the fact that the simulation data cannot accurately predict the details that will appear on the surface of the aircraft.
As a result, missile components manufactured on the basis of simulated data cannot be put into operation normally.
And the first thing that hypersonic weapons have to deal with is the huge thermal energy generated during flight.
Therefore, the heat resistance of the weapon's head has been increased by a considerable difficulty.
Even if the heat resistance of the weapon material is solved, it is necessary to ensure the normal operation of its communication, remote control, detonation and other systems.
At the same time, such materials must ensure that they have the ability to penetrate electromagnetic waves.
In the calculation software developed by NASA in the United States, there is a serious deviation between the calculated thermal and kinetic energy and the reality.
This also means that the relevant components developed by NASA are based on the wrong theory.
In addition, NASA limited the areas where it could be used in the early stages of developing Vulcan-CFD.
The United States only asked the allied countries to participate in experiments and technical discussions, and the relevant theoretical data was also protected.
However, this has led to the United States and its allies going down the wrong path.
Not surprisingly, the mainland is not included in the list of users of the software.
What the United States did not expect was that this operation would instead be a shot at itself in the foot.
Continental was not disturbed by errors provided by the Vulcan-CFD software.
As a result, he was the first to develop a supersonic missile and surpassed the United States in one fell swoop.
At the same time, Continental has also developed the most advanced high-temperature wave-transmitting materials.
"Conclusion"
As for the information that broke in the South China Morning Post, it is clear that this is helping the United States correct its mistakes.
Shouldn't the United States continue to invest a lot of material and financial resources in the wrong places, thus forming a containment?
As the United States, which has long been involved in the development of hypersonic weapons, it should not have failed to find software bugs.
Or is the paper just a gimmick designed to disrupt the military of the United States and its allies?
Of course, it cannot be ruled out that this is the idea of "war sudden", after all, the serious consequences of such problems can be taken into account by the author of the paper.
To reassure you, this paper does not detail what data is problematic.