Iran presents its first hypersonic ballistic missile
Recently, Iran has displayed its first indigenously made hypersonic missile ‘Fattah’. The firepower of this missile is 1,400 km.
- A hypersonic missile is a weapon that travels five times the speed of sound. This is a speed of over Mach 5 or about 6,174 km/h.
- Hypersonic missiles fly at a much lower altitude than conventional ballistic missiles.
Two types of hypersonic weapons:
- Hypersonic Glide Vehicle: First it is launched from a rocket, then it moves towards its target.
- Hypersonic Cruise Missile: Once a target has been identified, the missile is propelled in that direction by an air-breathing high-speed engine or ‘scramjet’.
Advantages of hypersonic weapons –
- These missiles use only kinetic energy and the energy generated by motion to destroy easy targets in underground facilities.
- These missiles can conduct long range retaliatory strikes against remote, shielded and/or time-critical threats (such as road-mobile missiles).
- These weapons are designed to be very fast and agile, so that they cannot be caught by conventional missile defense systems.
- The United States, Russia, and China are the leaders in the development of hypersonic weapons programs. Apart from these, Australia, India, France, Germany and Japan are also trying to develop such technology.
- India has successfully test-fired the Mach 6 scramjet engine under its Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle programme. The Hypersonic Wind Tunnel (HWT) test facility of the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has been commissioned.
Source – The Hindu
