The United States military is developing a next-generation hypersonic jet plane that can fly up to five times the speed of sound or twice the speed of a bullet. It sounds unbelievable but that’s true and this plane may take to the sky by 2023. This hypersonic Jet is built by experimenting research on the 2013 test flight called the X-51A Waverider.
The X-51A Waverider project cost about $300 million and the program began in 2004. The program's final test flight occurred on May 1, 2013 and the unmanned X-51A Waverider reached a top speed of Mach 5.1 (which is more than 5 times the speed of sound). But this military's next-generation hypersonic jet will go even further. X-51 Waverider was really a successful concept test that showed that scram jet engine launched on an aircraft could go hypersonic.
|
|
|
Mica Endsley (the Air Force's chief scientist) told Military.com that ‘Engineers in the Air Force and the Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) are working on guidance systems that are smart enough to point the plane in the right direction and they are taking into account the materials that can work well at hypersonic speeds’.
Endsley, also said about X-51A Waverider: "It was able to go more than Mach 5 until it ran out of fuel. It was a very successful test of an airborne hypersonic weapons system." Sources say that this latest Hypersonic Jet will also be unmanned.
Author : Syed Mohammed Ameen
Designation: Associate Blogger
Bio: I am a computer science engineer who believes that there is no substitute to hard work, I am a technology freak and currently a Blogger at Techies Net.
Bio: I am a computer science engineer who believes that there is no substitute to hard work, I am a technology freak and currently a Blogger at Techies Net.
