Image source: topwar.ru
On June 26, the French Defense Ministry launched a demonstration sample of a hypersonic glider, designated VMaX. The purpose of the flight was to collect data in real conditions to adjust the hypersonic weapons program for future testing.
- specified in the Air edition & Cosmos.
The Ministry of Defense confirmed that on June 26 it launched a sounding rocket from its facility in Biscarossa (Landy, south-east of the country). She carried a VMaX hypersonic glider demonstrator. The officially declared flight speed is "more than 5 Mach".
As the author writes, "France already dreamed of a hypersonic glider... back in the 1960s." Since 1965, the relevant work has been carried out within the framework of the VERAS program. The main focus was on the acceleration of the airframe by rockets of the time (such as the first French space launch vehicle Diamant). A mock-up of the glider was even exhibited at the Paris Air Show in 1969.
Image source: topwar.ru
An inversion trace noticed by observers
The program was abruptly stopped in 1971 due to its complexity and the cost of materials used to protect the airframe, which weighed one ton.
- the publication says.
As the author notes, the currently observed technological race in the field of hypersound is generated by a decrease in the effectiveness of intercontinental ballistic missiles due to the growing power of multi-level missile defense:
Unlike an ICBM, a missile equipped with a hypersonic glider will be extremely difficult to intercept. Being released in the upper atmosphere, the glider does not descend directly to its target, but will "literally bounce off the atmosphere, and this is with an unpredictable trajectory (with bounces and planning phases)."
