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Hypersonics Work Speeds Ahead
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 08:30 pm ET
08 April 2003
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Untitled COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo -- The U.S. Department of Defense has laid out a technological roadmap including a National Aerospace Initiative (NAI). These efforts are designed to give the nation control of space, high-speed hypersonic flight, more responsive payloads, energy and power technologies, including new modes of intelligence-gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance skills. Speaking here at the 19th National Space Symposium, Ronald Sega, Director, Defense Research & Engineering for the Department of Defense outlined an aggressive, fast-moving agenda. Sega said work in high-speed hypersonics is moving on numbers of fronts, within various organizations and agencies. "There is opportunity for synergy," Sega said, amongst military services and various agencies. Sega said that an NAI goal is to explore and expand hypersonic flight, moving up mach number speeds each year to Mach 15 (15 times the speed of sound) by 2012. Coming out of such research, Sega said, is the prospect of a two-stage-to-orbit booster, with the first stage using air-breathing technology. Furthermore, hypersonic research is going to enable high-speed strikes by military forces around the globe, he said. There is great value in moving weaponry around the globe at high speed to reach time-critical targets, Sega said. Sega, like many here at the symposium, worry about the engineering workforce. There is work to be done to secure the technical talent of the future. "The trend is not in the correct direction," he said.
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