DARPA looks to revive WWII German globe-trotting bomber plan

Third World War, because there would be no way for Russian and Chinese tracking systems to tell whether the ICBMs carried nuclear or conventional warheads, and because until well into their flight pattern it would not be possible to tell after which targets the ICBMS were going. Second, striking a terrorist target with an ICBM would be rather expensive. The idea was finally rejected, only to be given a second look by the Obama administration.

Trying to hit remote targets which become available for a short period of time and then disappear – an important terrorist emerging from a cave, a group of terrorists suddenly discovered to be making its way toward an unprotected target – by using submarine- or warship-launched cruise missiles or jets loaded with smart bombs is no good either. These systems can take hours to arrive at the relevant spot, by which time the elusive terrorist, stolen WMD, or another high-value target may have melted away again.

Page writes that what DARPA wants is something which would fit into a U.S. naval Mark 41 vertical launch tube of the sort used to pop off existing Tomahawk cruise missiles. It would have to carry a much smaller and more surgical 100-lb warhead, which would travel much faster — a minimum of 9,200 miles per hour, the equivalent of Mach 12 if measured at sea level.

Page notes that Mach 12 is well into the hypersonics range, faster than even the most exotic hydrogen-fuelled scramjets have yet flown. Such a missile could never be put into a Mark 41 launcher even if it could one day be built. DARPA’s previous plan for a Mach 6 airplane running on normal fuel was cancelled because nobody thought it was possible, and the ongoing X-51 WaveRider scramjet test vehicles — now delayed into this year – are not expected to go faster.

With the newly announced ArcLight program, though, DARPA is not talking about flight in the atmosphere at all. Instead, a less ambitious BGRV type of effort is requested, with a smallish naval launch tube type rocket firing the pocket, unmanned Silbervogel/X-20 into space followed by hypersonic re-entry no more than 2,000 miles away. The U.S. Navy’s 8,500 Mark 41 tubes, distributed around the world aboard its cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, should thus more or less blanket the planet with ArcLight coverage able to deliver an unstoppable 100-lb hypersonic warhead in less than half an hour from go.