Introduction to Challenges and Considerations for Hypersonic Telemetry Applications

Abstract

Hypersonic missiles provide many offensive benefits to the warfighter, but environmental challenges create difficulty for the engineers and telemetry experts who design and test them. Hypersonics bring complexities to a whole new level — ranging from the need to protect the components from extreme heat and compensate for the Doppler Shift or plasma attenuating the signal‐to‐noise ratio, all the way to the testing challenges associated with sensors that span thousands of miles. The emphasized use of Digital Engineering modeling techniques and the reliance on telemetry (TM) and flight termination subsystems (FTS), which are integral in obtaining information and preventing catastrophes, are very important considerations in hypersonic telemetry applications. This paper will discuss the challenges and considerations in designing and testing hypersonic weapons.