Chapter 1347 Some technicians lack professional ethics

Raymond was only a brigadier general, more than ten years younger than Lord. He certainly didn't know that Lord was thinking about retirement at the moment. He just shrugged and answered as usual:

"It's similar to the past. In China, for confidentiality reasons, some technical personnel will enter a relatively closed state for such key projects... But this state itself is a signal. As long as we investigate a little from the outside, it won't be difficult to analyze the nature of this project."

"Of course, we have no way of knowing the more specific details, but it happens that China has only developed a new medium- and short-range missile model in the past ten years, with a range of about 1000 kilometers. It is used to fill the range gap between DF-15 and DF-21, and also to improve the terminal penetration capability... Later, because the use characteristics were not obvious enough, it fell into a cooling state until it was recently reactivated."

As an officer in the Air Force Space Command, Lord has spent his entire career focusing on models that have the ability, or at least the potential, to reach the domestic market.

如果具体到华夏，那就基本上只有东风5/5A和东风31/31A两种型号，最多再加上个巨浪1/东风21。

As for this tactical model that can only reach the first island chain at most, it has been left to the army or navy in the war zone to worry about in the past.

As a result, now it is suddenly related to him.

"Fuck..."

Lord shook his head helplessly and cursed inwardly.

About ten years ago, they had a very powerful source of intelligence in the field of Chinese missiles.

But because of a lack of attention to protection, it was ultimately wasted on something that seemed meaningless in hindsight.

The current situation is very passive.

Of course, it was mainly because he was passive.

Generally speaking, the United States' intelligence advantage over China is still quite obvious.

"Range 1000 kilometers..."

Lord muttered softly, then as if he suddenly remembered something, he returned his gaze to the computer screen.

In the FALCON project data, technicians once gave a rough correspondence between the range of the booster rocket and the range of the gliding waverider.

Following his memory, he quickly found the part that interested him:

"A ballistic missile with a range of 1000 kilometers, if equipped with a hypersonic maneuvering glide mission payload, can probably achieve a final range of 1800-2500 kilometers..."

He closed his eyes and thought for a moment:

"Guam would not be reached by any means, but Japan, South Korea and the Philippines would be within range."

This number is of course extremely rough and not supported by sufficient data.

But this is not important.

He doesn't understand technology, and the lawmakers on Capitol Hill are even less so.

As long as they can find a sufficiently authoritative source of information to endorse it, they can then specifically exaggerate some of the threats from China.

The following things may not be difficult...

However, this sudden change of topic made Raymond, who was standing opposite him, confused:

"Wait, Admiral, we are still unable to determine the nature of the weapon the other party is developing... We cannot rule out the possibility that it is an air-breathing model similar to the X51A."

The organizational sequence of the Chinese military is different from that of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Russia. Both tactical and strategic missiles are uniformly equipped in the Second Artillery Force, and this cannot be used as evidence to distinguish the attributes of the equipment.

For example, the other side had basically completed the development of land-based cruise missiles, but did not equip the army with them. Instead, they added a 1st Cruise Missile Brigade to the Second Artillery Corps.

"..."

For a moment, Lord felt helpless.

Raymond was considered a close confidant of his, but even with this kind of relationship, it was not easy for him to openly talk about his retirement plans.

Fortunately, there is still the issue of military interests to deal with.

"An air-breathing hypersonic rocket requires a special power source. Do you have any information that can prove that China is developing a matching scramjet engine?"

Lord asked back.

"That...is not the case."

Raymond shook his head and then said:

"But their wind tunnel complex in Huairou is very large, and it is entirely possible to carry out the research and development of waveriders and scramjet engines at the same time..."

"Nothing is enough."

Lord interrupted his speculation:

"Based on the current evidence, we have sufficient reason to speculate that China is developing an unpowered hypersonic glide vehicle that uses rocket boost to gain initial velocity. It can strike targets at a distance of about 2000 kilometers like a ballistic missile. With existing technology, it is almost impossible to stably intercept it, so we need an equivalent model in response..."

The "parity" he mentioned certainly does not refer to performance parity but parity of deterrence capability.

That is, a weapon with an intercontinental range that can directly strike the enemy's homeland.

Raymond is just young and of a relatively low rank. He is not yet at the stage of thinking about revolving doors. There is nothing wrong with his brain.

When I heard my boss say this, I immediately realized:

“Can it be considered our equipment?”

Although we haven't thought about the competition between Lockheed Martin and Boeing yet, it's enough.

Anyway, Lord was just looking for a reason to convince the other party.

"Yes."

He resumed his relaxed posture at the beginning:

"Originally, this project should have been sentenced to death, but unfortunately, the X51A test was not completely successful, and the Chinese accelerated their hypersonic weapon development at this critical time, so we need to make preparations for both situations to ensure that we can open up a sufficient gap in equipment performance with the enemy."

He wanted to say it was a good thing, but after thinking about it, he felt that he was a senior air force general after all, and it was not appropriate for him to gloat overly over other people's misfortunes.

That's why I changed my mind temporarily.

Raymond naturally would not reveal these details.

In fact, his brain was working fast at this moment, thinking about how to modify the report in his hand to better meet his superiors' goals.

I don't have time to pay attention to these details at all.

But before he could figure out what to do, Lord had already issued new instructions:

"Please contact Ben Windeck, the director of Lockheed Martin, and tell him that I have something to discuss with him regarding the Falcon Project..."

……

As the (ostensible) leader in today's hypersonic field, the United States is paying close attention to China's actions.

In addition to the military and intelligence agencies, major aerospace-related companies are also analyzing the current situation through their own information channels.

So when Windeck got the call from Air Force Space Command, he realized almost immediately what the other party was trying to do.

In fact, over the years, although it has not received much funding from Congress, the conceptual plan of the Falcon Program has been improved by borrowing resources from other projects, just to wait for this day.

The next morning, he flew to Peterson Air Force Base and met with Admiral Lord, who was in high spirits.

The latter explained the current situation in the shortest possible terms and asked directly:

"If I give you some emergency start-up funds, how soon can you restart the development of the Falcon project?"

Due to the special nature of the Space Command, there is a portion of secret expenditure every year that is not supervised by the Accountability Office and the Treasury Department, and only a special committee can be involved in this.

Although the amount is not large and cannot support a complete project, it is still no problem as early research and development.

However, Windeck, who was well prepared, shook his head directly:

“No preparation is required, and no start-up capital is required.”

"Ok?"

Lord's face was full of surprise.

"Of the three sub-programs of the Falcon Program, HTV1 is not feasible at present because it involves overly complex composite material manufacturing technology. HTV3 is reusable and has autonomous power, which does not meet your needs. The remaining HTV2 happens to be progressing faster, at least the concept part is relatively complete. As long as Congress approves it, the project can be launched at any time."

Windeck answered straightforwardly:

"Rather, we have been waiting for this day for a long time."

For a moment, Lord didn't know whether to feel relieved or shocked:

"You...are already prepared?"

"Ah……"

Windeck uttered a short laugh:

"We knew before that some members of the X51A project team lacked professional ethics, so we were not optimistic about the subsequent development of this model from the beginning."

This answer made Lord feel a little helpless, so he had to change the subject:

"Unpowered aircraft require ballistic missiles or rockets as boosters. Do you have any considerations in this regard?"

"Originally there wasn't any, but..."

Windeck said as he looked at a group of photos on the wall next to him.

Those are several generations of core equipment that make up the United States' land-based nuclear forces and are part of the office decoration.

"Thanks to the Pentagon for asking you to retire all of your LGM118 intercontinental ballistic missiles."

There was a hint of sarcasm in his tone:

"In order to save the trouble of disassembling, we modified the Minotaur-4 solid-fuel carrier rocket based on it. The overall performance is not much different from the previous one, but a fourth stage has been added, so the carrying capacity has been reduced... However, it still has a payload of 908kg and a range of about 11000 kilometers, which fully meets the initial power requirements of the HTV2 aircraft..."