Chapter 1208 Hypersonic Competition

This battle that took place in the first island chain naturally caused a strong shock not only to the Chinese side.

As the initiator, the United States also responded quickly after the entire operation.

As of 2005, although the U.S. military, especially its top brass, has shown some signs of lax military readiness, it is still generally a fairly efficient military in terms of execution.

It only took about a week for Colonel Evan Robinson, who was responsible for the execution and specific command of normal operations, to submit a written report to Air Force Chief of Staff John Jungper, who had given him direct instructions.

The latter, after polishing and sublimating it a little, submitted a more comprehensive report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Ministry of National Defense, which directly issued the order.

Just one day later, he received a call asking him to attend a meeting.

This is not surprising.

After all, the plan that had been prepared for several months failed to achieve all its goals in the end.

Even if there is some luck involved, it is still necessary to summarize the advantages and disadvantages between the enemy and ourselves in order to be more targeted when planning real combat missions.

But to his surprise, the source of the call was not the Pentagon.

But the White House.

Obviously, the things to be discussed this time cannot be as simple as tactical issues.

Thinking of this, he immediately picked up the phone and made a call to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)...

…

The next morning.

Jiang Po hurried to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with all the materials he could think of.

When he entered the Oval Office on the west side under the guidance of a staff member, there were already several familiar faces sitting scattered inside.

In addition to the regular staff such as the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Assistant, there are also John Stone, chief engineer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Barbara, chief technology officer of AFRL, who generally do not often appear in the White House. Wilson and other technocrats.

The latter is nominally under the civilian control of the Secretary of the Air Force, and considering that Pete Titben is a temporary puppet, it can basically be considered that it is directly managed by the Secretary of Defense.

But in any case, the military is a business system after all, so as the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Jiang Po also has considerable influence on it.

Seeing that everyone present at the meeting had arrived, the president, who was sitting behind the large desk, cleared his throat slightly:

"Everyone, I have fully read the report submitted by the Air Force yesterday. It seems that... China seems to have some means of countering stealth fighters. The situation is not optimistic for us, so now we must re-examine our Some equipment development plans..."

He supported his arms on the table and leaned his upper body slightly forward, which was a very obvious offensive performance.

This kind of reaction is not surprising, but the other party's first words shocked Jiang Po, who had just settled down -

That's not what was written in the report he submitted.

Although the F22 was indeed discovered while approaching the opponent's coastline, and subsequently fell into a close-range fight, it did not fall into a disadvantage despite the fact that it was using less to defeat more.

More importantly, both Colonel Robinson and Jiang Po himself made it clear that if it was not a point-and-shoot test, but a real air battle, our formation would be fully confident of achieving 4-6 before entering visual range. The result was a victory and he escaped unscathed.

Obviously it doesn’t match the president’s description at all…

Jiang Po subconsciously turned his head to look at the Minister of Defense sitting on the sofa next to him.

But he found that the other party had a calm face at this time, as if he had expected this.

For a moment, he seemed to understand something...

It was at this time that the Minister of Defense intervened in the topic very appropriately:

"This shows that in order to achieve the 'knocking down' effect we had envisioned, it is not feasible to rely only on a small number of stealth fighters to fight alone... Even if we can achieve a very good exchange ratio in air combat, as long as we allow the opponent to advance If you are prepared, the efficiency of subsequent attacks will be greatly reduced.”

Although Jiang Po himself dislikes the other party's behavior and actions, he still quite agrees with this passage.

Including everyone else in the office, they nodded slightly in agreement.

"Then I think we should have two strategies."

Seeing this, the Minister of Defense pushed up his glasses slightly:

"First of all, it is to increase investment in the JSF project and equip fourth-generation fighter jets with more quantities, lower costs, and more comprehensive functions. This means changing the past strategy of "kicking down the door" by the leading unit, and instead using stealth aircraft to comprehensively Replacing old models such as the F15 and F16, giving all air forces the ability to kick down doors.”

"In this way, even if the opponent is alert, the air defense capabilities will be overloaded due to too many attacking units in a short period of time, thus dispersing the defense capabilities in a single direction and point..."

There was a slightly surprised expression on Jiang Po's face.

The content just now was so professional that it seemed as if it was coming from the mouth of a civilian defense minister.

I'm afraid the manuscript has been prepared in advance.

Still, he made his support clear.

Although JSF is a common project among the three services, the one with the fastest progress and the largest number of expected equipment is the A model of their air force.

Since it has been determined that the F22 cannot continue to increase orders, it is always good to speed up the mass production and service of the F35.

Next, the Minister of Defense continued:

"On the other hand, China's performance this time means that we may need to carry out large-scale strikes against ground and sea targets without completely clearing the opponent's air defense system. Therefore, in addition to ensuring the safety of the aircraft carrier platform itself, in order to ensure that the first wave of strikes has a sufficient deterrent effect, we should also consider upgrading our aviation ammunition..."

This is what Jiang Po wrote in the report.

In the latter part, the interests of officers and the civilian system are completely consistent:

Therefore, he took over the topic quite skillfully:

"Yes, the air-to-ground ammunition we currently use is mainly precision-guided bombs that need to be thrown in the air or have a certain glide ability, plus a small number of air-launched cruise missiles... But if these weapons face opponents with a relatively complete air defense system, they are either not safe enough for the carrier aircraft or can be easily intercepted midway."

"So I propose that the hypersonic aircraft should be transferred from the verification project to the official model as soon as possible... This is a weapon that no existing air defense system can effectively deal with!"

At this point, he turned his head and glanced at Barbara Wilson and John Stone.

"That's right, Mr. President."

Ston nodded first:

"In the past two years, we and Boeing have conducted two flight tests on the results of the Hyper-X research and development project, the X-43A hypersonic test aircraft, and reached maximum flight speeds of 6.83 Mach and 9.78 Mach respectively, successfully verifying the feasibility of using scramjet engines as a power for hypersonic aircraft and using tungsten alloys and nickel alloys to produce large aircraft shells."

Immediately afterwards, Wilson next to him also added:

"Our Air Force Research Laboratory is also working with Boeing to rapidly advance the research and development of the X51A hypersonic missile. At present, the scramjet test prototype has solved the copper heat sink structure and variable The problem of wide flow channel was solved, and in June 2003, a full-state ground prototype that met flight requirements was produced. Fuel cooling and supply were achieved with open-loop and closed-loop fuel supply systems..."

"Compared to the X43A, which is mainly used for flight testing by NASA, the X51A can use JP-7 aviation fuel and does not need to consider the long-term storage of cryogenic propellants, so it is fully capable of weaponization. "

"If the Chinese believe that they can deal with our attacks through some small actions in the field of air defense, then hypersonic weapons that are equivalent to or even better than the X51A will prove to them...even to the whole world that our air force is still capable of tearing through the defense of any opponent! "