AUKUS goes hypersonic; The Indo-Pacific.

"A strategic submarine pact turns its attention to a new breed of missiles

S IX MONTHS ago America and Britain said they would help Australia acquire the crown jewels of the defence world: nuclear-powered submarines. The AUKUS pact, announced on September 15th, reflected Australia's fear of China's growing power; America's willingness to break old taboos to counter it; and Britain's eagerness to bolster its role in Asia. The three countries also promised to co-operate in areas from cyber capabilities to quantum technologies. Now these allies are turning their attention to hypersonic missiles.

Such projectiles travel at sustained speeds of Mach 5 while manoeuvring. There are two sorts. Hypersonic cruise missiles, like Russia's Kinzhal, employed in Ukraine on March 18th, are powered by air-breathing engines. Hypersonic glide vehicles, like Russia's Avangard and China's DF-17, go up on rockets, but glide down over long distances.

China has "outpaced the United States in graduating hypersonic-specialised engineers, publishing open scientific papers, and constructing hypersonic wind tunnels", noted a report by CSIS, an American think-tank, in February. The Pentagon carried out a successful hypersonic test in mid-March (it was kept quiet to avoid raising tensions with Russia) but several previous ones failed. So it is not hard to see why America wants to collaborate with allies.

America and Australia have been working on an air-launched hypersonic cruise missile under the cheesy rubric of SCIFi RE for 15 years, taking advantage of the Woomera test range in southern Australia, one of the world's largest, and Australia's seven hypersonic wind tunnels. Britain is further behind, but gave a $12m contract to Rolls-Royce, an aerospace company, to work on suitable engines in 2019. The trio plan to swap notes "to accelerate our programmes", says a British official.

This evolution of AUKUS shows that Western allies see a pressing need to pool their resources and talents to keep pace with China. It might also future-proof the pact. America and Britain have been sharing information on nuclear propulsion technology with Australia since February; that sort of thing is so sensitive that it will stay within the club of three. But collaboration in other areas--which will now also include electronic warfare--might allow other Sino-sceptic partners, like India or Japan, to plug into AUKUS in the future." [1]

 

The fact is, the Russians are already using such weapons in practice, and AUKUS are still testing. Want not want, have to cooperate. Otherwise,  shame will force to hide underwater, where AUKUS began. So much money is being spent and there is nothing practical.

 

1. "AUKUS goes hypersonic; The Indo-Pacific." The Economist, 9 Apr. 2022, p. 28(US).