Amnon Barzilai
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/falcon080703.htnk
He is a member of the "Falcon" family. He should get from point A to point B, which is about 17 thousand kilometers away, within two hours. On the way he will pass through space, at a speed 10 times higher than the speed of sound. It will carry a load of more than five tons, and at the target point it will be able to penetrate 20-meter rocks and bunkers - and wreak massive destruction.
It is a ballistic missile, carrying a smart bomb, planned as part of a new American development program. According to the "Falcon" program (from the Continental US Force Application and Launch), the US will produce a new generation of weapons, including bombs and drones, with hypersonic speed. The weapons will be launched into space and from there they will fall on targets on Earth - thus freeing the US from dependence on bases around the world and alliances with different countries.
Development within the "Falcon" is planned to be completed in another 25 years, when according to Defense Weekly "Jane's" the first tests of the new weapon are planned in three years. About a month ago, the USA published a tender for the development of the technology, when it seems that the acceleration of the project also stems from the difficulty of the USA to obtain international cooperation in the war in Iraq.
According to the US Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), the program is designed to realize the government's "vision of achieving total military capability worldwide in 2025" to free the arms of the US military from relying on forward bases and enable it to respond quickly and decisively to instability or threatening actions from hostile countries and terrorist organizations."
According to the tender, the ultimate goal is to develop "a hypersonic cruise vehicle (Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle - HCV), which can be reused and is capable of taking off from a normal military runway and attacking targets at a distance of about 17 thousand kilometers in less than two hours." According to Daniel Gore, a military commentator at the Lexington Institute in Washington, the unmanned vehicle will carry a payload of up to 5,400 kg and will be able to fly at a speed of up to 10 times the speed of sound. In view of the technological challenges in propelling a warhead of this size and at these speeds, the American agency estimates that more than 20 years to develop this vehicle.
Meanwhile, in the next seven years, the US Air Force and DARPA will develop a cheaper system, capable of reaching any point on Earth. This is a "small launch vehicle" (Small Launch Vehicles - SLV), which will carry an arrowhead into space and from there drop it over the target. This arrow will be made of a bomb placed without a motor, which will dive towards the target at high speed and because of its speed it will not be necessary to carry a simple explosive Made of titanium, at such a speed it can penetrate to a depth of 20 meters, with the shock waves it will create causing tremendous destruction. According to Jane's Defense Weekly, the first demonstration flight of the vehicle is planned for 2006
Major General (res.) Prof. Yitzhak Ben Israel, former head of the Weapons Development Administration (MDA) at the Ministry of Defense, says that the idea behind the "Falcon" - to develop ballistic missiles that will be launched from space, return to Israel at high speed and penetrate with great force into fortified targets - examined in the last twenty years, but the high costs led to the abandonment of the plans for such development.
The DARPA agency is a leading factor in the American government for the development of weapons and defense systems, which is not directly subordinate to the Minister of Defense. Its annual budget is about 3 billion dollars. Most of its projects - about 90% - are not produced in the end. One of its successful and famous projects, To create technology that would allow computer operators to communicate with each other, developed and became the Internet.
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