The Falcon of Freedom?

The US Department of Defense is all set to launch an ambitious program to develop a new generation of weapons, including huge Hypersonic Cruise Vehicles (HCV) that will allow the US to attack its enemy anywhere at lightening speed (seven times the speed of sound) from its own territory.

The HCV, being developed under the code name of Force Application and Launch from Continental US (FALCON), will operate like an aircraft from conventional runways within the CONUS (continental US) and reach time critical targets up to 9000 nautical miles away in less than two hours with pay loads of up to 12,000 pounds.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Air Force (USAF) are jointly working on the FALCON program, and DARPA has already invited bids from contractors to develop technologies and demonstrate capabilities that will “enable transformational changes in global, time-critical strike missions.”

Global Reach by 2025

The target of the FALCON program is to fulfill the US government’s “vision of an ultimate prompt, global-reach capability (circa 2025 and beyond)…This autonomous aircraft would be capable of taking off from a conventional military runway (in the US) and striking targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than two hours,” according to DARPA’s document.

It would carry a 12,000-pound payload consisting of Common Aero Vehicles (CAVs), cruise missiles, small diameter bombs or other munitions. The DARPA’s invitation for bids elaborates that “such innovative concepts could enable effective global reach missions and potentially provide the first stage of two-stage access to space vehicles.”

“The point of the program is to develop a hypersonic cruise missile, which will fly at a very high speed; but the more accurate it is the less it will need to carry,” says Jack Spencer, a senior Policy Analyst for Defense and National Security in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation. According to him, HCV and programs like it are important “to conduct operations with speed and precision and to achieve success with minimal loss of life.”

Warfare like everything else in modern society is moving at a very fast pace. HCV is important also because, “air defenses are becoming far more capable and will be better able to defend against existing air borne capabilities, and the US can not guess where it will be asked to fight next and therefore can not ensure that it will have forward basing assets required to conduct future operations.” It is estimated that it will take over 20 years to develop such a warhead with that size and speed.

Interim Low Cost Global Reach Weapons

However, DARPA and USAF are planning to develop interim “low cost global reach weapons” such as Small Launch Vehicles (SLV) within a few years’ time. SLV are useful to drop bombs and also to launch small military satellites into orbit. The first flights of the new technology are scheduled to take place within three years. 

DARPA’s draft solicitation states that the technologies will be matured to flight readiness, integrated into a system design and demonstrated in a series of flight tests. “The flight tests will be conducted in a progressive manner and will provide an evolutionary forum for developing responsive concepts of operation and low cost launch infrastructure,” according to the draft.

In what may be said as modernization of the US military, the USAF is also considering many options for future long-range strikes --subsonic, supersonic, hypersonic, sub-orbital and orbital designs. The FALCON program is an ambitious one to execute global strike missions.

Common Aero Vehicles

In US defense jargon, the warhead, known as Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) is an unpowered, maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicle that would be guided on to its target at high and accelerating velocity.

The CAV could carry up to 1,000 pounds of explosives but at those high speeds explosives may not be needed. A simple rod would be able to penetrate several feet of solid rock and the shock wave would have enormous destructive force. It could be used against deeply buried targets or moving assets inside.

Jane’s Defense Weekly reported that the first CAV flight demonstration is provisionally scheduled for mid 2006, and the first SLV flight test would be carried out a year later. A test of enhanced CAV mated with SLV may take place by late 2007. A simple prototype demonstrating HCV technology would be tested around 2009.

Small Launch Vehicles to Launch Satellites

For USAF, the SLV rockets are not only the CAV delivery platform or just a responsive launch system to boost CAV to its insertion conditions like geo-location, altitude, velocity and altitude; but also a next generation cheap and flexible means to launch military satellites into orbit even at short notice – within a week, days or hours. 

“The SLV will serve a two-fold function in that it will also provide a low cost, responsive launch capability for placing small satellites into Sun Synchronous Orbit,” according to DARPA.

The common set of CAV/SLV systems that will be matured in an evolutionary manner, according to DARPA, “will provide a near term (approximately 2010) operational capability for prompt global strike from CONUS (continental US) while also enabling future development of a reusable HCV for the far-term (approximately 2025).”  The document, however, does not clarify the range of the new technology.

“The world can expect freedom on the seas, in space, long-term stability and economic sustainability from these developments. It is precisely this sort of military modernization that will allow the US, with its allies, to deter large aggression in future and defeat that aggression in short order,” says Spencer.

Rekha Shresthais a Nepali journalist based in Kathmandu. She is specialized in defense and foreign affairs. She also covers water, environment and health issues. You can reach her at: shrestharekha@hotmail.com.