Pentagon's X-plane: any target on Earth in an hour by 2016 !

Just seen this on RT com

Don’t you hate it when you have to ship something from the North Pole to Antarctica and only have an hour to spare? The Pentagon’s space-age researchers might be able to fix that, and as early as 2016. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, says that an unmanned hypersonic vehicle that soars through the sky at 20 times the speed of sound could be ready within the next four years. If researchers can make that goal, DARPA scientists will be able to give the government the ability to propel their Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) — the so-called “X-plane” — to anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes.

full text here - rt.com...

They must already have a working prototype, area 51 perhaps ?

reply to post by DanaKatherineScully


Why 2016 I thought it was 2012 December 21st to be exact

reply to post by mrclean1


Oh don't worry if they are announcing it publicly for 2016 they already perfected it in 2006. That's a game changer militarily speaking. If it is weaponized already, who can stop something like that, and who has the capability to shoot it down?

Already been tested and crashed and burned once, outer shell from what i understand ripped off at high velocity. And crashed into the pacific. As was said when this news was first released months ago, this bit of info is not much news really since China and Russia are rumoured as well to have Hypersonic capabilities. Still cool none the less.

Just wish we'd spend more time and effort on things that don't involve war and blowing things to pieces....

SaneThinking

Originally posted by SaneThinking
Already been tested and crashed and burned once, outer shell from what i understand ripped off at high velocity. And crashed into the pacific. As was said when this news was first released months ago, this bit of info is not much news really since China and Russia are rumoured as well to have Hypersonic capabilities. Still cool none the less.

Just wish we'd spend more time and effort on things that don't involve war and blowing things to pieces....

SaneThinking

Imagine if this technology was used to ship cargo around the world, if it was vastly available it could probably replace sea ships. It probably wont be released to the public.

Dropping a bomb traveling at Mach 20?...You might miss Iran and hit Bora Bora.

oopsy!

I live on the coast near San Diego.

There are a few threads about this. They are testing it over the Pacific.

When one of these things go overhead, it is incredible and very scary.

You cant see them...But you can hear and feel them.

reply to post by whyamIhere


I figured they would be too high up in the atmosphere to hear/feel.

What do they sound like?

reply to post by whyamIhere


Thats pretty nuts that you can feel the aircraft as it passes over, what altitude would you say they do these flyovers at and have you in the past been able to catch possibly the effects in a video of sorts, or further elaborate???

SaneThinking

It is impossible to tell direction of travel.

I haven't seen any exhaust trails or any sign of them.

But I was standing on a cliff with my dog looking out over the water.

Something went by so incredibly fast it almost knocked me over.

Several people were looking around speechless.

Fast is a word that doesn't even come close to describing this thing.

reply to post by whyamIhere


Did it sound different than a (normal) military jet?

Not trying to give you a hard time... just want to understand more about this.

reply to post by SaneThinking


Three times. Each time it's crashed in the 9th minute of the flight. It's launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Minotaur booster, which drops off and the ramjet takes over. They've reached speeds of around Mach 22. The first aircraft entered an unrecoverable attitude situation, meaning that the aircraft computers weren't able to keep the aircraft stable enough to continue the flight, and it crashed prior to finishing the flight as a Safety of Flight situation. The second one just vanished, telemetry was lost without any warnings appearing beforehand. The third aircraft lost large pieces of skin, this was an expected situation, but they turned out to be larger than they expected, and it entered an unrecoverable attitude situation and crashed into the Pacific as a Safety of Flight situation. What's interesting is that all three failures occurred at 9 minutes into the flight.

Here is a very cool site with a lot of good information on the program.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Just to clarify, neither of the test vehicles had a propulsion system. Both were gliders.

reply to post by Phage


There have been several lately, the one that I was talking about in that post is the Falcon. There's also the X-51 program that is getting ready for another flight. It gets a little confusing keeping them all straight since they're basically doing the same thing.

Originally posted by Zarniwoop
reply to post by whyamIhere

 

Did it sound different than a (normal) military jet?

Not trying to give you a hard time... just want to understand more about this.

The sound lasted one second.

This thing went by so fast. The shockwave shook me to the core.

I wish I had more to add...But nobody will ever get a picture of this thing.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Apparently Boeing had the X-51 going hypersonic in 2010... At least thats what they say about it here.

The .pdf is attatched to the link.... Pretty badass considering the whole platform operates on jet fuel, among other things, like accelerating through multiple Mach numbers above M5.

reply to post by W3RLIED2


Yeah, and they're getting ready for another flight soon. I believe the aircraft has been delivered to Edwards, and the flight is scheduled for later this year.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Edwards always gets the fun stuff, I swear.

Isn't Phantom Ray still there waiting for more flights? A little slower than an X plane but IMO, equally bad ass.

Sorry, dont intentionally want to go off topic... Its kind of related.

reply to post by W3RLIED2











Better than a wind tunnel.

Phantom Ray flew in April of 2011, but is entirely Boeing funded. A number of potential customers were on hand to witness at least one flight, but I haven't heard of any potential customers.

www.boeing.com...

spectrum.ieee.org...

www.flightglobal.com...

So, the US blubberment warmongers can now (or can soon) target & kill anyone it wants in the world within an hour at 20 x the speed of sound.

Wow, that makes me soooooo proud to be part of this human species :-/

Why can’t we just spend the money to get off this rock as soon as possible if we hate each other so much?

Mickierocksman