tech2 News Staff

For a military with the world’s largest defence budget, things move at a glacial pace, or so experts say. Therefore, it’s surprising that the US Navy actually managed to design, build and test a new ramjet missile in just six months.

How did they do it? Off-the-shelf parts and a credit card.

To avoid bureaucracy and miles of red tape, the team behind the rocket decided to keep things small and use off-the-shelf parts. Most of the components, in fact, were simply bought with a credit card. They were also relatively cheap, which allowed the team to test their design more frequently.

A normal defence purchase would involve tedious budgeting, red tape and the setting up of contracts.

The missile itself is based on a ramjet design, which is more efficient than a regular rocket engine. A ramjet engine is conceptually very simple. The missile’s velocity is used to compress air into the engine compartment under high pressure and this is in-turn used to ignite the fuel. The reaction energy propels the rocket forward at incredible speeds.

As Popular Mechanics points out, a ramjet design depends on high-speed airflow, supersonic in some cases, to work. It cannot be used to launch a missile. To get the missile up to speed, a rocket motor is required.

US Navy scientists decided to buy a commercially available rocket motor, designed for hobby rockets, and used it in their missile. It worked. There was no need to set up a rocket motor factory or contract the unit out to a defence company. It was cheaper to buy the $900 rocket motor than to develop one in-house.

Rapid testing helped speed up development and within 6 months, a solid-fuel, ramjet engine missile was ready.

By contrast, India’s own anti-ship Brahmos missile, which also uses a ramjet, took many years to develop.

The US Navy’s prototype rocket claims to offer three times the range of a liquid-fuel rocket and is faster.