The US Defense Department has requested a vehicle from a small Australian technology business to test dreadful hypersonic weapons.
The Pentagon will purchase a reusable aircraft from Sydney-based Hypersonix Launch Systems that can outrun missiles and aircraft propelled by conventional fuel at speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 7.
An airplane could fly the 6580 km from Sydney to Perth and back in roughly an hour by flying between Mach 5 and Mach 7.
Australia declared last year that it will collaborate with the US and the UK to create a hypersonic missile arsenal.
They are also being built by other nations, including as China and Russia.
Air defense systems must contend with the serious threat posed by hypersonic missiles, which have a much lower trajectory than high-arcing ballistic missiles.
The first documented combat deployment of the technology was by the Russian military last year when they launched hypersonic missiles into Ukraine.
However, US testing of hypersonic weapons is now restricted to land- and sea-based test ranges and requires pricey, irrecoverable test firings, which slows the advancement of the nascent technology.
The DART AE (Additive Engineering) vehicle, which is primarily constructed via 3D printing and is powered by a hydrogen-fueled SPARTAN scramjet engine, was selected earlier this month as the Hypersonix aircraft.
It is “capable of flying non-ballistic flight patterns at speeds of Mach 5 to Mach 7 and up to 1000km in range (400 seconds flight time),” according to the business.
The aircraft will be flown by Hypersonix early in 2019.
However, Australia’s strategic defense allies clearly see immediate potential in our technology, according to managing director David Waterhouse. “Our longer-term focus is to capture a slice of the emerging multi-billion-dollar commercial market for the deployment of small satellites,” he said.
We couldn’t be happier because this is our first significant contract and an important step in our commercialization process.
This moves Australia one step closer to being a significant participant in the global space competition.
A hypersonic test vehicle will be flown by Hypersonix in collaboration with the Australian government.
