Blackswift program

With its intuitive tab-driven interface, flight planning is simple and easy to accomplish. Gesture-based controls enable users to confidently deploy their Black Swift S2 with minimal training while being able to collect data over geography that is topically diverse with confidence. Modular by Design, Accurate by Nature. S2 Specifications. It gives us the ability to fly at slower speeds which allow us to fly the airplane in much more confined spaces.

The problem is, the air has to be moving really, really fast and at high altitudes in order for the scramjets to work. It had to be flown up into the atmosphere by a B plane. Then, a rocket brought the X up to multi-Mach speeds. Only then could the aircraft's air-breathing, scramjet engine take over, and propel the X at hypersonic rates.

The hypersonic portion of the flight lasted only 10 seconds. Essentially, Blackswift aims to combine the plane, the rocket, and the scramjet-powered craft into a single airframe, with a single engine that has both a standard turbine and scramjet. It's an enormous challenge. Moreover, Blackswift's masters at Darpa and the Air Force want the thing to fly hypersonically for a full minute. What Lewis is still trying to figure out is how he'd test the thing, much less fly it.

The combo engine, especially, "is a big unknown. It's very difficult to simulate, especially on the ground. The first time you do test it is going to be when you fly it," he says. At least "there are no obvious violations of the laws of physics," Lewis adds.

And, as if getting hypersonic aircraft to fly in a straight line weren't hard enough, the Darpa requirements for Blackswift call for the craft to do an "aileron roll" -- a spin, along its axis -- in midflight.

Why the roll? Lewis says he "doesn't know. In its recent report on the new defense spending bill , the committee noted, "it is not clear why that will necessarily enhance the program. Meanwhile, the Air Force is working on another hypersonic project, the X , which gets up to Mach speeds the old-fashioned way -- with a plane and a rocket booster. But the X is scheduled to fly that fast for five or six minutes.

The first of six test flights for the program is scheduled for next year. Granted, it'll only be in a straight line. And it won't be reusable like Blackswift might be. But hypersonics is already so tough right now, that would still be a major triumph.

The disparity between the two crafts' flight times is causing some in Congress to question the Blackswift investment.

There's also the question of what Blackswift is for, exactly. As the Committee noted, "It is not clear Some see Blackswift as a logical successor to the legendarily quick and stealthy SR Blackbird reconnaissance jet -- even calling Blackswift "SR Fat chance; the thing would have to carry a few hundred-thousand points of fuel to pull it off.

Blackswift flies, at least with the power of animation. The video of the aircraft looks great, and for those not swayed by the plane, there's a woman in a lowcut shirt! Blackswift Defense officials are tight-lipped about details surrounding the Blackswift program. Hypersonic speed describes velocities upward of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. Under the Prompt Global Strike label, defense officials are developing a capability to strike a target anywhere on the globe within 60 minutes of a launch order.

My favorite oft-repeated quote about hypersonics is that "it's the future of aerospace I haven't seen anything about this mentioned anywhere except via a video no text on the Fox News website: video link. According to the obviously out-of-date information I've found, the Blackswift was rumored to be a super secret aircraft co-named HTV-3X that used a turbojet to reach supersonic and then a scamjet to reach hypersonic -- essentially a 21st century version of the J Instead, the Blackswift described in the video uses pulse detonation engines, essentially a modern version of the V-1 buzz bomb engine.

This engine requires significantly less moving parts and achieves much higher efficiency than a turbofan, and is technically able to go hypersonic without any kind of "dual-stage" engine. The Fox News video is total braindead I spoke to an extremely reliable source who told me that the huge new hangar at Groom Lake is for a Mach 6 hypersonic UCAV that has spun off from the hypersonic Falcon project. The source told me that this is to be a system that will have both ISR and attack versions and it is being made at Lockheed's Skunk Works.

Support equipment has already arrived at Groom Lake along with operator flight sim workstations, etc. The plan is to debut the craft around The timetable according to my source is way farther advanced than that discussed in the Air Force Times article.

Apparently this aircraft is only a couple of years from being operational - as opposed to the Air Force's stated yr development time. There is only one source on the web that has discussed the Blackswift and so I have included a link to that web site. The actual model of the "Blackswift" vehicle looks like this I have no doubt that Lockheed is involved in a new SR72 project. When I queried DARPA about Falcon last month, while reporting on a related subject, the agency's spokesperson noted this new direction.

The Falcon Blackswift flight demonstration vehicle will be powered by a combination turbine engine and ramjet, an all-in-one power plant. The turbine engine accelerates the vehicle to around Mach 3 before the ramjet takes over and boosts the vehicle up to Mach 6. Aviation Week recently reported on some elements of this new demonstration , noting that the "[k]ey to its operation will be an inward-turning inlet that forms the basis for the axisymmetric scramjet flowpath design just evaluated in the recent test in Australia.