The Pentagon has revealed the completion of a second successful flight of a new reusable hypersonic test vehicle, marking a significant advancement in the nation’s development of advanced hypersonic technologies.
The successful test flight, conducted in March by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Test Resource Management Center (TRMC) in collaboration with the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division (NSWC Crane), was announced earlier this week.
The recent tests, which were preceded by earlier tests last December, mark the U.S.’s return to reusable hypersonic flight testing since the manned X-15 program ended nearly six decades ago.
The successful completion of the Pentagon’s hypersonic test flight this year represents the strongest signal yet of renewed momentum in America’s hypersonic research and development.
The Stratolaunch Talon-A
Both recent test flights featured the experimental Stratolaunch Talon-A hypersonic vehicle, which lifted off from the Roc carrier aircraft during tests over the Pacific Ocean.
Reaching speeds exceeding Mach 5 during the fight, each of the tests saw the aircraft successfully return to Vandenberg Space Force Base. These achievements support the DoD’s Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonics Test Bed (MACH-TB) project, which was developed to help accelerate the creation and testing of innovative hypersonic systems for the U.S. military’s inventory.
A Cooperative Effort
According to the DoD statement released this week, NSWC Crane awarded the MACH-TB contract to Leidos on behalf of TRMC through the Strategic and Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems (S2MARTS) Other Transaction Authority (OTA) vehicle.
As the program’s prime contractor, Leidos in turn awarded Stratolaunch, LLC, a competitive contract to provide flight testing services.
In a separate statement this week, aerospace giant Northrop Grumman also highlighted its involvement in the development and testing of the new hypersonic vehicle.
“Northrop Grumman Corporation successfully completed two test flights of its Advanced Hypersonic Technology Inertial Measurement Unit at hypersonic speed, leveraging Stratolaunch’s reusable hypersonic airplane, Talon-A,” the company stated.
“These advanced flight tests move engineers one step closer to precisely navigating hypersonic vehicles in GPS-denied environments, further protecting the trajectory of the hypersonic vehicle from adversary threats,” the statement added.
“Hours of Critical Ground and Flight Data”
Achieving the navigation unit’s survivability—known as a hemispherical resonator gyroscope—was a key accomplishment, given the extreme forces and harsh conditions encountered during hypersonic flight.
“This technology collected hours of critical ground and flight data, pivotal for future development,” Northrop Grumman’s statement added.
“Demonstrating the reuse of fully recoverable hypersonic test vehicles is an important milestone for MACH-TB,” said George Rumford, Director of the DoD’s TRMC, highlighting the significance of reusability for hypersonic test vehicles.
Accelerating Hypersonic Technologies
The MACH-TB program focuses on advancing the Pentagon’s hypersonic capabilities for military applications. It aims to provide fast-paced but affordable capabilities for testing experimental hypersonic systems.
Part of the program’s success lies in its focus on facilitating collaboration across the DoD, as well as with other federal agencies, industry partners, and academic institutions. The result is a greatly streamlined experimentation process, which accelerates the development of critical technologies like the U.S.’s hypersonic arsenal.
“Lessons learned from this test campaign will help us reduce vehicle turnaround time from months down to weeks,” Rumford said this week.
Scott Wilson, Program Manager of MACH-TB, said the recent flights “were a huge success for our program and for the nation, adding that the data collected from the initial experimental flight of the Talon-A has shown “extremely positive” results.
“The opportunity for technology testing at a high rate is highly valuable as we push the pace of hypersonic testing,” Wilson said.
“The MACH-TB program is pleased with the multiple flight successes while looking forward to future flight tests with Stratolaunch,” he added.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.