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Chinese air force may have cracked how to land a hypersonic drone
- Flight control computers’ inability to calculate a descent quickly enough at Mach 5 has been an obstacle to using hypersonic aircraft
- But Chinese military researchers say they have rethought the software to work around the problem
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Landing an unmanned aircraft flying at above five times the speed of sound on a standard air strip is not easy, but Chinese military researchers say they have found a way to make it safer, potentially bringing applications for hypersonic flight a step closer.
The technology has progressed considerably, with China and Russia deploying various types of hypersonic missiles in recent years, and growing interest in applying the advances to drones. But bringing such aircraft back to ground safely has proved problematic – even more so with the added urgency and complexity of a military setting.
A modern plane relies on software to find an optimal path of descent, and humans can intervene if anything goes wrong. At hypervelocity, however, even the fastest flight control computer struggles to calculate it in time.
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In a paper published in peer-reviewed domestic journal Tactical Missile Technology last Wednesday, Dai Fei and colleagues from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force said they had made improvements based on a classified model of hypersonic drone.
Their work appeared to confirm the existence of a Chinese hypersonic drone programme – suggested previously by satellite images – but the PLA has yet to reveal details of it. It is unclear whether the drone Dai’s team used was under development or in service.
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