Hypersonics - DoD's dot-com Gold Rush?

May 09, 2023

Good morning and welcome those who joined us this week! Last week we wrote about the hypersonic weapons race (Part I). This week’s edition, Part II, will cover the opportunities for entrepreneurs and/or investors in DoD’s race to field hypersonic weapons - as well as the startups already making an impact.  

Part II: Hypersonics Market Overview

  • Today’s Hypersonics Market

  • Red Team Update - Ukraine intercepts a Russian ‘hypersonic’ missile

  • The Term Sheet

Today’s Hypersonics Market

The word hypersonic is having a “dot-com” moment in defense tech. Every defense prime (and a few startups) are building multiple solutions with hypersonic attributes - since DoD will almost surely fund it right now.

As a reminder from last week, DoD requested $4.7B for hypersonic weapon programs and $225M for hypersonic defense. The department appropriated $100M for the DoD to establish a Joint Hypersonics Transition Office - to reduce stove-piped, proprietary systems that duplicate capabilities and increase costs. The DoD even awarded Texas A&M $20M (renewable up to $100M) to manage a University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH).

On top of all this, the US government has expressed concerns about the ability of the industrial base to support future demand for hypersonic weapons - particularly manufacturing constraints if multiple weapon programs were to go into production at the same time. We mentioned last week how the President invoked the National Defense Production Act to expand production of materials for hypersonic systems.

So, what can startups or investors do to help us win the hypersonics race?

  • Provide testing infrastructure

  • Develop composites

  • Develop autonomous systems

Seeing all the major hypersonic contracts filled by the defense primes can give founders and startups the impression there is little opportunity for entrepreneurs in defense. We’re here to tell you that is not the case. In fact, one of the most needed capabilities in startup defense is building testing infrastructure for hypersonic vehicles - an area currently under-developed by the primes. One key takeaway from the 2nd Annual Hypersonics Summit was the urgent need to develop testing infrastructure that can digitally model, ground test and fly hypersonic vehicle systems.

Flight tests of these systems can be very expensive. The only way to understand the complex multiphysics interactions will be from ground testing and digitally modeling the vehicles. Wind tunnel testing is severely lacking in the United States compared to China, and most wind tunnels lack the ability for long-duration loading environments that couple aerodynamic and thermal effects (the Air Force’s Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9 can operate for only 15 seconds, for example). Congress appropriated $47.5M in FY2022 for hypersonic test infrastructure.

Hypersonic weapons and commercial vehicles are multi-disciplinary scientific challenges. An entrepreneur or investor could be building technologies for a completely different type of product that could potentially suit the hypersonics industry. To illustrate this point, the DoD needs help from:

  • New Space Companies: satellites in LEO/MEO that can detect, track and provide continuous-updating data of hypersonic missile launches

    • Requires IR sensor advancements and extremely fast data latency to track missiles

  • AI / Autonomous Experts: vehicles and weapons need to fly autonomous trajectories which quickly adapt to uncertain aerodynamic and thermal environments as well as a changing battlefield

  • Composite Material Manufacturers: thermal-resistant Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) capable of sustaining temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit / 1,648 degrees Celsius

    • Computational methods to simulate the material’s performance

    • Novel methods to reduce the manufacturing costs of carbon-carbon composites

  • Atmospheric Scientists: The Navy is developing simulation tools to model the aerodynamics of hypersonic weapons and the interactions with cloud formations and turbulence

Lastly, here are a few of the challenges each branch of the military is funding or investing in:

  • Air Force

    • Developing hypersonic simulation and test-bed technology

    • Developing hardware-in-the-loop test beds for advanced missile guidance technology

    • Advanced and alternative fuels that can improve scramjet speed and performance

  • Army

    • Investing in wind tunnels, high-temperature electronics and high-performance computing in service of hypersonic applications

  • Navy

    • Investing in materials that could be suitable to hypersonics and computational methods to test those materials

    • Simulation tools to model hypersonics

    • Funding novel ideas for advanced propulsion, seekers and sensors, guidance, navigation and payloads

  • Marines

    • Funding research to develop a design for a hypersonic munition compatible with the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS)

  • Missile Defense Agency

    • Laser defense technology

    • Directed high powered microwave technology

    • Particle clouds designed to disrupt hypersonic flight

Overview of Emerging Tech Companies in Hypersonics

Russian MiG-31 Loaded with a Kinzhal ‘Hypersonic’ Missile

Red Team Update - Ukraine Intercepts a Russian ‘Hypersonic’ Missile

This past Saturday (6 May), Ukraine’s air force claimed to have downed a Russian hypersonic missile, the Kinzhal. US military analysts verified the claim. Here’s the latest:

  • The missile was downed over Kyiv using the newly acquired American Patriot defense systems, marking the first known time the Ukrainians have been able to intercept one of Russia’s most modern missiles

  • The Kinzhal missile was air launched by a MiG-31 aircraft from Russian territory on May 4th and shot down during an overnight attack

  • The Russian Kinzhal missile is one of the most sophisticated conventional weapons in Russia’s arsenal

    • It’s a modified version of the Russian Army’s Iskander short-range ballistic missile, which is designed to be fired from truck-mounted launchers on the ground. Launching the missile from a warplane at high altitude, instead of from the ground, leaves it with more fuel to use to reach higher speeds

  • The Kinzhal has been used by Russia over the course of the war, including during the sustained assault on the Ukranian energy grid in the fall and winter last year and an underground munitions dump

Arsenal’s Take

  • This is a great headline, except for one problem: The Kinzhal is not a hypersonic missile. While it has hypersonic attributes - namely speed - it still follows a ballistic trajectory like conventional weapons (see Ian William’s report and Sandboxx News’ Take for more reasons why it’s not)

  • The Patriot System is designed to shoot down missiles with ballistic trajectories and the Kinzhal’s irregular flight trajectory is ‘ballistic enough’ that an intercept is within the Patriot System’s capabilities

  • Even true hypersonic weapons can be intercepted in the last phase of flight, though missiles at greater than Mach 5+ speeds allow for very few / only one intercept attempt

  • With more advanced hypersonic weapons (not the Kinzhal), the Patriot Missile Defense Battery success rate drops off considerably

If you are interested in hypersonic missile defense, we encourage you to read Dr. Tom Karako’s report from last year. We had the pleasure of speaking with him recently and learned that space (specifically medium and low earth orbits in conjunction with the traditional geosynchronous orbits) is essential to hypersonic missile defense. We’ll write on this topic in coming weeks.

The Term Sheet

A rollup of defense industry mergers, acquisitions and notable contract wins 

Notable Contract Wins

About Us

Our team has 30+ years of combined experience as military officers using the end products. We’ve worked in both government and industry. From MIT to Wharton, Wall Street to biotech, and DARPA to the flightline, we will offer you a unique perspective on how to navigate America’s defense tech industry.

The opinions expressed in this newsletter are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of DoD, our employers or any affiliated organization. This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide legal, financial or professional advice.