The U.S. Military Must Go Hypersonic

Often in history, the biggest science and engineering experiments are conducted in secrecy. The Manhattan Project is the most prominent example, but stealth and the Global Positioning System also come to mind. However, on other occasions, the most cutting-edge programs are being carried out in plain sight. The development of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with the early program’s numerous public failures, is a strong case. Today, the direct science and technology descendent of the missile race of the 1950s, the development of hypersonic glide bodies, is similarly unfolding in full view of America’s citizens and the world as the Multi-Service Advanced Capabilities Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB).

In late 2022, the Pentagon announced that its Test Resource Management Center would work with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, in Indiana, to create a common test bed for defense agencies and universities to test glide bodies designed to operate at speeds of Mach 5 to 8, the range assigned to “hypersonic” vehicles as well as the materials and components (warheads, command and control nodes, control surfaces) that accompany them. Dynetics, a subsidiary of Leidos, was contracted to be the program integrator, while Kratos Defense & Security Solutions took the lead in developing the common test bed platform. The project’s first flight lifted off from RocketLab’s launch facility at Wallops Island, Va., in June 2023, utilizing a derivative of that company’s Electron rocket. In September of that same year, the MACH-TB team signed an agreement with Stratolaunch, LLC, the brainchild of Microsoft founder Paul Allen and Scaled Composites genius Burt Rutan. Stratolaunch provided the dual-fuselage lift aircraft as well as its Talon rocket to carry the test platforms first to altitude and then to hypersonic speeds. So far, the MACH-TB program has conducted but a handful of flights, and not all of them have been “successful” in satisfying every stated goal of the flights. However, the fact is that during this “research” stage of the development of the hypersonic glide bodies that might one day sit on top of U.S. military missiles, the intent is to gain as much data during each flight and often pursue a “test to failure” strategy, and to this extent, the program has been a tremendous success with a strategy that has proven itself over time.

About the Author

Jerry Hendrix

Jerry Hendrix is a retired Navy captain and a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute.

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Often in history, the biggest science and engineering experiments are conducted in secrecy. The Manhattan Project is the most prominent example, but stealth and the Global Positioning System also come to mind. However, on other occasions, the most cutting-edge programs are being carried out in plain sight. The development of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with the early program’s numerous public failures, is a strong case. Today, the direct science and technology descendent of the missile race of the 1950s, the development of hypersonic glide bodies, is similarly unfolding in full view of America’s citizens and the world as the Multi-Service Advanced Capabilities Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB).

In late 2022, the Pentagon announced that its Test Resource Management Center would work with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, in Indiana, to create a common test bed for defense agencies and universities to test glide bodies designed to operate at speeds of Mach 5 to 8, the range assigned to “hypersonic” vehicles as well as the materials and components (warheads, command and control nodes, control surfaces) that accompany them. Dynetics, a subsidiary of Leidos, was contracted to be the program integrator, while Kratos Defense & Security Solutions took the lead in developing the common test bed platform. The project’s first flight lifted off from RocketLab’s launch facility at Wallops Island, Va., in June 2023, utilizing a derivative of that company’s Electron rocket. In September of that same year, the MACH-TB team signed an agreement with Stratolaunch, LLC, the brainchild of Microsoft founder Paul Allen and Scaled Composites genius Burt Rutan. Stratolaunch provided the dual-fuselage lift aircraft as well as its Talon rocket to carry the test platforms first to altitude and then to hypersonic speeds. So far, the MACH-TB program has conducted but a handful of flights, and not all of them have been “successful” in satisfying every stated goal of the flights. However, the fact is that during this “research” stage of the development of the hypersonic glide bodies that might one day sit on top of U.S. military missiles, the intent is to gain as much data during each flight and often pursue a “test to failure” strategy, and to this extent, the program has been a tremendous success with a strategy that has proven itself over time.