JayS wrote:Singha wrote:so we are proceeding to our own avengard. this would be a good RV for 1-warhead missiles like A4 and A5.
Avengard is a Hypersonic glider, sort of skipping on the upper atmosphere at M25-30 speed. HSTDV is a powered hypersonic flight vehicle, a Scramjet. It will be flying at M6 or so. Hypersonic glider is relatively easier tech, India should be able to put together a prototype within 3yrs and operationalize one within a decade if the Political leadership wants to. Scramjet tech is much more complex.
I wouldn't call the hypersonic glider an "easier tech". It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish with each weapon type and what your requirements are for performance. The US for example has spent about a decade trying to develop a significantly more maneuverable (compared to a baseline/historic performance) and capable HGV and as the challenges, failures and lessons learned with falcon showed there is a lot of invention required to get that right. Even they with decades of hyperosonic experimentation and data, are hedging with a much simpler Sandia swerve based BGV and putting it into service before DARPA's more ambitious BGVs are put through their paces and put into service around early to middle of the next decade. I don't think anyone intimately familiar with the HTV-2 and the X-51 would call the former "easier" than the latter. Scramjet ignitions and even positive acceleration has been achieved but I guess the challenges there are are around size, weight, performance and having seekers and guidance that can function at sustained high mach cruise phases. Some of these require serious work and probably explains why scramjets, which have achieved significant technology milestones in Russia and US over the last couple of decades have yet to show up as an operational system. But very different challenges, especially when you are trying to develop tactical BGV's that have to still maintain non ballistic trajectory for >50% of their mission range. You can have a scramjet program and WS with much simpler requirements and a HGV program that absolutely tests the limits of your MatSci and Vice Versa. It all depends what your design goals are.