The Air Force later this month is set to test what could be a ground-breaking flight of a hypersonic missile.
The X-51 WaveRider took its maiden flight last year, demonstrating the longest-ever flight of a supersonic combustion ramjet engine, also known as a Scramjet. But the next test flight is expected to fly faster and farther: at speeds of up to Mach 6...
...and lasting four minutes.
"Our next flight is scheduled for March 22"...
...The X-51 will be launched from a B-52 bomber flying over the Pacific Ocean Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center Sea Range, and then will be rocket-boosted to speeds up to several times the speed of sound before transitioning to Scramjet power.
The X-51 program is a consortium between Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. The customers are the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with support from NASA.
Boeing X-51 PDF Data Sheet
The mission: Attack anywhere in the world in less than an hour. But is the Pentagon's bold program a critical new weapon for hitting elusive targets, or a good way to set off a nuclear war?
A waverider is a hypersonic aircraft design that improves its supersonic lift-to-drag ratio by using the shock waves being generated by its own flight as a lifting surface.
Coooooooool Surf The ShockWave ! ! !
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Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 9
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146th Airlift Wing, California Air National Guard
