Hypersonic vehicle...

Similarly, hypersonic transport aircraft would allow the army to move troops far more quickly to reinforce positions when a threat is detected. If reinforcements were required in Ladakh, troops from Thiruvananthapuram would require just 25 minutes of flying time to reach Leh.

The DRDO has taken almost 20 years to develop and test-fly the HSTDV at its flagship missile laboratory, the Defence R&D Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad. Spearheading this effort was Dr Prahlada Ramarao, who headed DRDL till 2005 and then remained associated with the project from the DRDO headquarters in Delhi.

Prahlada explained that hypersonic flight presented two primary technological challenges. First, the air being rammed into the engine at high supersonic speeds makes it difficult to simultaneously inject fuel and burn the mixture without the flame being extinguished by the air blast.

“It is like lighting a candle in a hurricane and keeping the flame alight. That is why a hypersonic vehicle’s engine is called a ‘supersonic combustion ramjet’, or scramjet engine,” he said.

The second technological challenge is to cool the HSTDV’S skin, which gets red hot due to the friction created by travelling at Mach 6. “We chose materials for the skin that can withstand very high temperatures, and circulate fluid under the skin to carry away the heat,” said Prahlada.

Once ready, the HSTDV performed flawlessly in the Monday test. According to the DRDO, the HSTDV piggybacked on a solid rocket motor to an altitude of 30 km, where it separated from the launch vehicle. There, the air intake

opened, hypersonic combustion was initiated and sustained, and the cruise vehicle continued on its programmed flight path at Mach 6 for more than 20 seconds.

“The parameters of launch and cruise vehicle, including the scramjet engine, were monitored by multiple tracking radars, electro-optical systems, and telemetry stations… A ship was also deployed in the Bay of Bengal to monitor the performance during the cruise phase of hypersonic vehicle. All the performance parameters have indicated a resounding success of the mission,” stated a DRDO release.