Raytheon Working with UA to Advance Hypersonics

Tucson is securing its reputation as a hypersonics hotbed thanks to further collaboration between Raytheon Missiles & Defense and AME. In a recent article for Breaking Defense, a digital magazine about the politics and technology of defense, Raytheon highlighted the challenges and innovations of the "hypersonic era." These innovations include heat management, propulsion and space-based sensing, and are done in collaboration with multiple universities, including the UA. 

According to Raytheon: Hypersonic weapons, by definition, are about speed. They fly at a minimum of 3,800 mph, and that’s where the engineering challenges begin.

The biggest one is the heat caused by friction as the air passes over the fast-moving vehicle. Many materials can’t survive that kind of thermal stress. More heat-resistant materials tend to be heavy, very expensive, or both. Using them solves one problem but creates others: A heavier airframe needs more propulsion to reach speed, which requires a more powerful engine and more fuel, which adds weight and increases cost. Experts at Raytheon Technologies have been working for years to overcome those heat problems, and they’re now applying that knowledge to hypersonics. 

“We have to go faster. We also have to go farther. We have to be able to detect threats at longer distances. We have to be able to target at longer distances. We have to be able to close kill chains at longer distances,” Raytheon president Wes Kremer said in the article. “We have to be able to do that across multiple domains. How we work across domains and how we solve those types of problems is one of the true synergies that we have in this business.”