Raytheon Studies Supersonic Tomahawk<\/a><\/span><\/p>\nRaytheon Studies Supersonic Tomahawk
Aviation Week & Space Technology
06\/18\/2007, page 56<\/p>\n
Douglas Barrie
London<\/p>\n
Raytheon studies supersonic cruise missile within Tomahawk infrastructure constraints<\/p>\n
Printed headline: High-Speed Shortcut<\/p>\n
Raytheon is studying a “Supersonic Tomahawk” concept it believes could offer the U.S. Navy a quick path to fielding a comparatively high-speed conventional strike weapon.<\/p>\n
After 18 months of company-funded concept development, Raytheon has submitted preliminary study work to the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR).<\/p>\n
“We decided to look at what we could do from a Raytheon viewpoint. . . .Could you design a supersonic Tomahawk to fit . . . in the current tube,” says Harry Schulte, vice president of strike weapons at Raytheon Missile Systems.<\/p>\n
One aim was to examine whether the constraints of fitting within the existing Tomahawk launch-tube would place unacceptable limitations on a supersonic weapon’s performance in terms of range. “Could we live with the constraints?” says Schulte.<\/p>\n
The 1,000-mi.-range subsonic Tomahawk has a cruise speed of about 0.8 Mach. While a supersonic weapon based on the “same” airframe size would not give a similar range, Schulte says the figures came back suggesting 600-650-mi. ranges were achievable.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_8Psnm0b0g1E\/Rnl2pf4EcvI\/AAAAAAAAAJA\/w2y24gCiYcg\/s400\/tomohawk.jpg\")
The Supersonic Tomahawk concept indicates a clear lineage to its subsonic origins. Credit: RAYTHEON<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The company discussed with engine manufacturer Williams propulsion options for the design concept. The design studies suggested that a cruise speed of Mach 2 to Mach 2.2 was viable.
…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Given its relatively low speed, less than Mach 2.5, this is much easier than some of the high supersonic (Mach 3+) and hypersonic vehicles (Mach 5+). The lower speed eliminates a whole bunch of leading\/bleeding edge technologies which are EXPENSIVE and time consuming. Raytheon Studies Supersonic Tomahawk Raytheon Studies Supersonic TomahawkAviation Week & Space Technology06\/18\/2007, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}