Chapter 1347 Some technicians lack professional ethics
Raymond is just a brigade general, more than ten years younger than Lord. He must not know that the latter is thinking about retirement at this moment, but it is just a stern Shrugged and replied as usual: "As similar to the past, in China, for the sake of confidentiality, some technicians will enter a relatively closed state... but this state itself is a kind of The signal, as long as you have a little investigation from the outside, it will not be difficult to analyze the nature of this project. "
" Of course, there is no way to know the more specific part, but coincidentally, China has only developed a new medium- and short-range missile model in the past ten years, with a range of about 1,000 kilometers, which is used to fill the range gap between Dongfeng 15 and Dongfeng 21. It also improves the end penetration capability... Later, because the use characteristics are not obvious enough, it fell into a cooling state until it was recently reactivated. "
As an officer of the Air Force Space Command, Lord's attention throughout his career Basically all of them are placed on models that have the ability, or at least have the potential to reach the local level.
If it comes to China specifically, there are basically only two models: Dongfeng 5/5A and Dongfeng 31/31A, and at most, it will add a Giant Wave 1/Dongfeng 21.
As for this tactical model that can only reach the first island chain at most, it was handed over to the army or navy in the theater to worry about it.
As a result, I suddenly became involved with him now.
"fxxk..."
Lod shook his head helplessly, and cursed inwardly.
About ten years ago, they had a very powerful source of intelligence in the field of Chinese missiles.
But because of no attention to protection, it was wasted on something that seemed meaningless in hindsight.
The current situation is very passive.
Of course, it is mainly because he himself is passive.
Overall, the United States' intelligence advantage over China is still quite obvious.
"The range is 1,000 kilometers..."
Lod whispered softly, and then turned his eyes back to the computer screen as if he suddenly remembered something.
In the information of the FALCON project, technicians once gave a rough correspondence between the range of the booster rocket and the range of the gliding wave-railing body.
Following the memory, he quickly found the part of his interest:
"A ballistic missile with a range of 1,000 kilometers can probably be achieved if it is combined with the mission load of hypersonic maneuver gliding. Final range of 1800-2500 kilometers..."
He closed his eyes and thought for a moment: "You can't reach Guam anyway, but Japan, South Korea and the Philippines will be within range."
This number is of course extremely rough, and There is no sufficient data support.
But that doesn't matter.
He doesn't understand technology, and the members of Capitol Hill will only understand less than him.
As long as you can find a sufficiently authoritative source of information as an endorsement, you will then target some threats from China.
The things that followed may not be difficult...
However, such a sudden change in topic made Raymond, who was standing opposite, confused:
" Wait for the general, we cannot determine the nature of the weapon that the other party is developing for the time being... it cannot be ruled out that it is an inhaled model similar to the X51A. "
The organizational sequence of the Chinese army is as well as the US, Soviet and Russian. Different, both tactical and strategic missiles are uniformly equipped in the Second Artillery Unit, and this cannot be used as evidence to distinguish the attributes of equipment.
For example, the land-based cruise missile that the opponent has basically completed its development is not equipped for the army, but has added a 1st cruise missile brigade to the Second Artillery.
"..."
For a moment, Lord felt a little helpless.
Raymond is a confidant he trained, but even with this kind of relationship, it is not easy to talk about his retirement plans on the surface.
Fortunately, there is also a level of military interests that can be used to deal with.
"The suction-type superb requires special power. Do you have any information to prove that China is developing a supporting scramjet engine?"
Lord asked back. "This...is not." Raymond shook his head and then spoke again: "But their wind tunnel group in Huairou is very large, It is entirely possible to develop wave-riders and scramjet engines at the same time..."
"Not enough."
Lord interrupted his speculation:
"Based on the current evidence, we have enough reason to speculate that China is developing a superpower without motivation The sonic gliding vehicle, which obtains its initial velocity through rocket boosting, can strike targets at a distance of about 2,000 kilometers like a ballistic missile, has almost no possibility of stable interception with the existing technology, so we need a peer model in response... "
The "equality" he mentioned certainly does not mean performance equality but deterrence equality.
It is a weapon with a range of intercontinental levels that can directly attack the opponent's local area.
Raymond is just young and has a relatively low level, and is not yet at the stage of thinking about the revolving door, so his mind itself is fine. Hearing his boss say this, he instantly reacted: "Can it be our equipment?"
Although I haven't thought about the relationship between Lockheed Martin and Boeing The competition level is enough.
Anyway, Lord just found a reason to convince the other party.
"That's right."
He resumed his initial relaxation posture:
"Originally, this project should have been sentenced to death, but well... but unfortunately, X51A The test was not completely successful, and the Chinese accelerated their hypersonic weapon development at this critical time point, so we need to make two preparations to ensure that we can open up enough equipment performance gap with the other party."
He originally wanted to say that it was good, but after thinking about it, he felt that he was a senior Air Force general after all, and was not suitable for gloating too much.
That's why I changed my words temporarily.
Raymond naturally would not expose these details.
In fact, his brain is running rapidly at this moment, thinking about how to modify the report in his hand to better fit the goals of his superiors.
No need to pay attention to these details at all.
No mistakes, one poem, one post, one content, one in 6, one book, one bar, one read!
But before he could come up with a little, two or three, Lord had already issued a new instruction:
"Go and help me contact Director Ben Windeck of Lockheed Martin, and said that there are situations related to the Falcon Project to discuss with him..."
...
... >As the leader in the field of hypersonics today (on the surface), the United States pays great attention to China's actions.
In addition to the military and intelligence agencies, major aerospace-related companies are also analyzing the current situation through their respective information channels.
So, after Windeck received a call from the Air Force Space Command, he almost immediately realized what the other party wanted to do.
In fact, although not receiving much money from Congress over the years, the concept plan of the Falcon Project has been borrowing resources from other projects to improve it in order to wait for such a day.
At the morning of the next morning, he flew to Peterson Air Force Base and saw Admiral Lorde with a spring breeze.
The latter explained the current situation in the shortest possible language and asked directly:
"If I give you an emergency start-up fund, how long can you be at the fastest time Restart the research and development of the Falcon project within time? ”
Due to the particularity of the Space Command, there are a portion of secret expenditures here that are not supervised by the Accountability Bureau and the Ministry of Finance every year, and only a special committee can handle it. This question.
Although the amount is not large and cannot support a complete project, there is still no problem as early research and development.
However, Windeck, who had been prepared, shook his head directly: "No preparation, no start-up capital."
"Huh?" >
Lod's face was full of surprise.
"The three sub-programs of the Falcon Project, HTV1, involves too complicated composite material manufacturing technology, is basically not feasible at present, and HTV3 can be reused and has independent power, which does not meet your needs. The rest HTV2 is just about to be progressing faster, at least the concept is relatively complete, and the project can be started at any time as long as Congress approved it."
Windeck replied simply and neatly:
"It's better than Say, we have been waiting for this day for a long time."
For a moment, Lord didn't know whether he should be relieved or shocked:
"You... are you prepared long ago?"
"Ha..."
Wendeck let out a short laugh:
"We knew before that some members of the X51A project team lacked professional ethics, so they didn't go from the beginning Optimistic about the subsequent development of this model."
This answer made Lord a little unable to deal with it, so he had to change the topic:
"Unpowered aircraft require ballistic missiles or rockets as boosters. In this regard, you Have you any considerations? ”
"It wasn't there, but..."
Windeck said as he looked at a set of photos on the wall next to him.
That is the core equipment that constitutes the United States' land-based nuclear power and is part of office decoration.
"Thanks to the Pentagon to ask you to retire all the LGM118 intercontinental ballistic missiles."
His tone was a slight sarcastic sarcasm:
"In order to save the trouble of disassembly, we transformed the Minotao-4 solid carrier rocket on its basis. The overall performance is not much different from that before. It is just an additional fourth stage, so some carrier capacity has been reduced. ...But there is still a load of 908kg and the converted range is about 11,000 kilometers, which fully meets the initial power requirements of the HTV2 aircraft..."
(This chapter is over)