Its unmanned variant could carry weighty warheads for the armed forces, double up for surveillance operations or zoom into space with satellites, dramatically lowering the cost of each voyage.
At first glance, this hypersonic jet would pass off as a blend of an aircraft and a missile. “We are working on the design with a seed money of Rs 15 crore. This is one of the biggest challenges ever in aeronautics. We have identified the team and are networking to build a database on hypersonic systems,” said Prahlada, the director of DRDO’s Defence Research and Development Laboratory, Hyderabad.
The scientists are looking at early 2007 for the first major milestone: the flight of a technology demonstrator for 20 seconds. A successful flight would prompt requests for more money: at least Rs 200 crore to enhance the design and development facilities and Rs 500 crore for a prototype. “We plan to hoist this 7-metre vehicle into the skies with the help of a rocket and turn on its engine for hypersonic flight. The engine will scoop in air (oxygen) to burn the fuel during the flight and so we have advantages in terms of weight of the vehicle (because of reduced fuel) and intake of oxygen from the atmosphere. The challenge is to generate the thrust at very high speeds,” Prahlada said.
As chairman of the Hypersonic Technology Demonstration Vehicle, Prahlada is keen to expand his team. “We have 100 scientists, but we need at least 500 of them. In principle, we at DRDO, Isro and some academic institutions have agreed to set up a hypersonic technology centre. We will put together about Rs 50 crore for this facility where experts will pool in all data on complex technologies involved,” he said. Aerospace experts from DRDL, Isro, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and a couple of IITs form the core group for the craft. “The momentum is picking up. My colleagues in Isro are keen to reduce the cost of launching satellites and have given us inputs on the design. We are trying to draw Indian engineers working abroad into the team,” Prahlada said.
So far, only two groups worldwide have reported success with such high-speed vehicles. Nasa’s X-43 unmanned aircraft hit a record 6,600 mph on November 16, 2004, during its 10-second flight. Carried by a modified B-52 bomber, the 12-ft-long wedge-shaped craft was released off the California coast and then propelled to an altitude of 110,000 ft by a Pegasus space booster. The X-43 fired its experimental engine for about 10 seconds, travelling at speeds approaching 10 times the speed of sound. The flight, Nasa’s third try with an X-43 unmanned craft, was part of its $230-million programme to develop such hypersonic craft. The first X-43, in June 2001, was blown up over the Pacific Ocean by a self-destruction mechanism when the Pegasus booster rocket carrying it went out of control.
