A U.S. Army official this week outlined where the service sees specific opportunities to lower costs for parts of hypersonic missiles and highlightedlimitations in the present supply chain.
Dynetics [LDOS] has the Army contract to construct the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) utilized by each the Army and Navy, which each services are integrating into their separate launching platforms. The Army goals to field their ground-based hypersonic weapon first, the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) by the top of this yr.
Last month, the Army’s top acquisition official Doug Bush confirmed the primary operational battery of the LRHW can be fielded by the top of the calendar yr reasonably than the top of fiscal yr 2023 (Defense Every day, Sept. 19).
Chris Mills, deputy director on the Army Hypersonics Project Office of the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, this week said he sees opportunities on the industry side “for improvements in internal components, as we try to enhance the system going forward.”
Meaning they’ll have technology insertions with “specific capabilities that might improve the system because it goes forward,” Mills said during a event on the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference on October 9.
Mills said they especially foresee opportunities to lower costs within the parts with components which are already low price and with the thermal protection system, pushing at “making that more producible and cheaper or inexpensive and more cost-effective. That may be a spotlight area as well.”
Mills also outlined the challenges in hypersonic missile supply chains which are still “immature.”
He said DoD has put a “pretty sizeable amount of investment” into improving the availability chain, particularly in hypersonic materials to take care of extreme temperature heat and plasma issues.
Nevertheless, Mills noted that “a part of the issue with the hypersonic industrial base is we’re talking small quantities without delay. So we’ve got to maintain these corporations which have that technology in business, and producing and leveraging that capability.”
Beyond hypersonic-specific industry immaturity, Mills said there may be currently “huge demand” on the availability chain to ramp up all booster and missile technology across all DoD missile systems, which impacts hypersonic programs as well.
“There’s an enormous demand on that provide chain without delay, because we’re constructing missiles across the portfolio. And in addition that portfolio had almost a dip in production for some time, constructing missiles. And it’s almost just like the, across the board, DOD in some areas, having to relearn design and construct latest missiles. And now we’re ramping up the availability chain with that.”
Mills said this also includes limitations on the availability chains common to other DoD systems and hypersonic weapons, including electronic components, alloys and forgings.
“Even stuff like forgings and alloys and stuff like that, there’s an enormous demand on forgings. Precision forgings. In order that’s among the challenges we have now.”
A July DoD notice said a brand new Innovation Capability and Modernization (ICAM) team was seeking to help address gaps within the technology and manufacturing supply chain for hypersonic weapons. The Department overall seeks to chop the estimated production costs of future hypersonic weapon capabilities by 30 to 80 percent (Defense Every day, Aug. 3).
The notice specifically said the ICAM team goals to enhance hypersonic supply chain technologies, lower costs, increase manufacturing capability and use disruptive technologies to assist address production advancement gaps.
Last yr, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu said she desires to make hypersonic weapon systems more inexpensive, which she said can be more achievable once the commercial base is more established (Defense Every day, Jan. 14 2022).