Photos: Amazing X-Planes from the X-1 to XV-15Ĭopyright 2013, a TechMediaNetwork company. X-51A Waverider - Not Quite Warp Drive | Video
But in this case, he added, commercial and military use "may happen about the same time, because the timeframes have been shrinking over the course of many years."įollow Mike Wall on Twitter and Google+. "You look historically, after things are used for military applications, there's a couple of years and it usually then works its way into commercial application," Vogel said. It's execution at this point."Ĭommercial hypersonic scramjet flight would likely come soon after the technology achieves military use, he added. "I'd say the tools, the development of the technology under the Air Force's leadership - we've evolved to the extent where this isn't invention. "It's really close," said Joe Vogel, X-51A program manager at Boeing, which built the four Waveriders for the Air Force. "We're busily working with leadership on what the next steps are to take, and I'll leave it at that," Brink said.Ī lot of work still needs to be done before hypersonic scramjets first see action in battle, but the technology shows great promise, officials said. While the military has no plans to resurrect the X-51A, another hypersonic program may well follow in the vehicle's footsteps soon. "We got all the data that we wanted on our last flight-test vehicle, so we were ecstatic with the results." "All in all, it was a very, very good day," Brink said. But this final one was a rousing success, Brink and others said. The previous two Waverider flights, in June 2011 and August 2012, both failed. The vehicle accelerated to Mach 4.8 using a solid rocket booster, then reached Mach 5.1 with its air-breathing supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) engine before crashing into the sea as planned. On May 1, the Waverider was carried aloft by a B-52 bomber and released over the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for example, has launched two trials of its HTV-2 unmanned hypersonic bomber prototype, which reached Mach 20 in an August 2011 test flight before losing control.Īnd the Air Force worked with DARPA on the $300 million X-51A program, which began in 2004 and wrapped up this month with the test flight of the fourth and final robotic Waverider scramjet vehicle. military has been researching ways to achieve a rapid strike capability. "That not only brings a whole set of responsiveness to the warfighter, it also, at those speeds, enhances the survivability of those systems as they overfly enemy territory," Brink said. (The speed of sound at sea level is about 762 mph, or 1,226 km/h.) There are obvious advantages to ramping up to hypersonic flight, which is generally defined as anything that reaches at least Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. Typical cruise missiles travel at around 500 to 600 mph (800 to 965 km/h), Brink said. "If we go forward with that plan, we probably won't start hitting the battlefield until at least the 2025-2030 timeframe," Brink told reporters on May 9.