Australia & US Pool Resources for Hypersonic Systems

Australia's Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the United States Air Force have signed an agreement to advance research into hypersonic (Mach 5 or higher) flight.
The program is scheduled to last for 8 yrs and the combination of projects under this effort makes for one of the largest collaborative ventures to be undertaken between the two nations.

Programs that will benefit from this collaborative effort are DARPA's FALCON, which is hoped to provide lower-cost satellite launches and an obvious lead-up to various military spaceplane projects.
Other hypersonic programs to benefit are the RATTLRS project and the Aussie HyFly project.

It sounds like the US and Australia have shifted hypersonic strike research into high gear.

Sources:

"AUSTRALIAN-US COLLABORATION ON HYPERSONICS RESEARCH"; Australian Defense Ministry Media Release, Nov 10, 2006

"US & AUSTRALIA COLLABORATE ON HYPERSONIC SYSTEMS"; NGC Email Announcement, (non-classified)

Could this be related to the University of Queensland's achievements with the HyShot program?

The HyShot is maybe one of the woelds best known and succesful scramjet tests and is a collaboration between the Australia Centre for Hypersonics (at the Uni. Of Queensland), Australian Defense Force Academy (at the Uni. of New South Wales) and the Australian Defense Dept.

HyShot V reached an impressive speed of mach 8 on 18th June 2006.

yes, the University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales are integral parts of the Australian side of this research.

Erm... I know from personal experience universities and classified material tend not to go hand-in-hand, does anyone know if this is public domain research, or how does the US/Oz military intend to stop publishing of the work done if its not?


Although, I suppose developing a database on hypersonic/SCRAMjet designs is not exactly the same as applying it to a useable application.