Abstract
The United States, China, and Russia are engaged in a technological battle to become the world’s leader in hypersonic technology. Hypersonic refers to any object that travels at speeds of Mach 5 or greater, and this technology will likely become the future of warfare. While traditional intercontinental ballistic missiles reach hypersonic speeds, they follow a fixed ballistic trajectory making them predictable and thus are easier to intercept. In contrast, modern hypersonic weapons have high maneuverability at hypersonic speeds, making them difficult to intercept. My technical project focused on the design of an unpowered hypersonic projectile as part of UCAH’s 2025 Undergraduate Hypersonic Flight Design Competition. For my STS research project, I studied the legality and ethics of military strikes conducted by the United States through an Actor Network Theory framework to identify the most influential actors within the targeting process.
As a member of the University of Virginia’s Hypersonic Low-Altitude Research Projectile (Hyper-LARP) team, I helped develop an unpowered, high lift-to-drag hypersonic projectile optimized to maximize range at minimal manufacturing costs. Our team started by conducting a trade study of three different families of hypersonic vehicles and selected the winged glide vehicle configuration because of its excellent lift-to-drag ratio and ease of manufacturability. To design and optimize the vehicle, we used SolidWorks for computer-aided design (CAD) modeling, Ansys Fluent for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, and Python for statistical sampling and surrogate modeling across a ten-dimensional design space. Finite element analysis (FEA) was conducted using Ansys Mechanical to verify the vehicle could survive the extreme thermal and structural loads of hypersonic flight. Trajectory optimization using NASA’s Optimal Trajectories by Implicit Simulation (OTIS) software yielded a final range of 100.4 km. In January 2026, Hyper-LARP was selected as a national finalist to conduct hypersonic wind tunnel testing at CUBRC’s facilities in Buffalo, New York. To prepare, we altered the vehicle’s design to adapt to CUBRC’s wind tunnel sting configuration, incorporated slots for pressure transducer ports at important aerodynamic locations, and ensured ease of manufacturability by splitting the vehicle into three distinct sections that assemble easily.
My STS project analyzed the legality and ethics of military strikes by the United States in modern combat. Using an Actor Network Theory (ANT) framework, I investigated the military’s chain of command and the Joint Targeting Cycle as outlined by military doctrines to identify the most influential actors within the strike process. A case study of the 2017 Sharyat Airfield strike was conducted to demonstrate how military doctrines and procedures translate into the real world. I also discussed the development of the president’s power over the military and the criteria that make a pre-emptive strike legal and ethical by investigating domestic and international laws, military doctrines, Congressional reports, and news articles. The overarching goal of my paper was to determine what constitutes a legal and ethical pre-emptive strike, and to identify which actors are responsible when military operations fall outside of the limits of domestic and international law.
My technical and STS projects are complementary. The technology developed during my technical project represents a new strike method that must fit into the network of legal and ethical documents studied in my STS paper. The Joint Targeting Cycle is not constrained to a certain type of weapon. If the United States were to begin using hypersonic weapons, the process, as it stands now, would follow the same procedure as outlined in Joint Publication 3-60. As hypersonic technology continues to advance, there may be revisions to doctrine such that a higher threshold or Secretary of Defense approval is required to use hypersonic weapons.
Notes
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering
Technical Advisors: Dr. Christopher Goyne and Dr. Xinfeng Gao
STS Advisor: Dr. Joshua Earle
Technical Team Members: Victoria Sun, Michael Novak, Genevieve Forrer, Soren Poole, Joe McPhail, Eric Voigt, Lukas Hange, Kayla Kadlubek, Michael Della Santina, Owen McGilberry, Channing Reynolds, Ava Frodsham, Arwen Nicolau
