WASHINGTON – The US Department of Defense wants to use private investment in commercial hypersonic vehicle technology to demonstrate high-speed test aircraft.
The Defense Innovation Unit announced this week a hypersonic test vehicle seeking proposals from commercial industry for a program called the Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Test Capability, or HyCAT, to ease the strain on the Pentagon’s test infrastructure. The company, which works with non-traditional companies to push commercial technology to military users, plans to select suppliers later this year and aims to fly the aircraft within the next two years, according to a Sept. 1 filing.
DoD is developing about $15 billion of hypersonic systems between 2015 and 2024, which can fly faster than Mach 5, or about one mile per second. That investment is spread across about 70 programs led by the military services and their research labs, which are mostly testing platforms but are beginning to consider technology for high-speed cargo transport and presidential airlift applications.
Testing infrastructure has become a significant limitation in the development process, with most major programs performing only a few tests each year. Barry Kirkendall, DIU’s space technical director, told C4ISRNET in a Sept. 1 interview that the ideal test rate for these programs is closer to one flight per week.
HyCAT’s goal, he said, is to free up some infrastructure and use commercial technology to validate the test aircraft’s new materials and systems to help push the department toward its target. The program is interested not only in air vehicle designs but also in related technologies such as hypersonic propulsion systems and advanced materials.
“This whole effort is to try to create and overcome some of these log jams that we’ve been building up over the last decade,” he said.
For HyCAT, DIU is partnering with the Pentagon’s Joint Hypersonics Transition Office and Mike White, director of hypersonics under the secretary of defense for research and engineering. Kirkendall’s Office of Research and Engineering approached DIU in March — about a month after top Pentagon leaders met with industry executives to discuss obstacles to developing these capabilities — to explore opportunities to work with commercial companies pursuing hypersonic technology funded by private investors.
“Here at DIU, we’ve done a lot of good things with investor money,” said Kirkendall, adding that HyCAT not only helps solve DoD test issues, but also strengthens its relationship with the commercial hypersonics market.
HyCAT is open to the international industry, the company said, expecting interest from companies in Japan, Australia, Norway and India.
Ryan Weed, DIU’s HyCAT program manager, said there is some skepticism within the department about whether there is a real commercial market for hypersonic technology, but he thinks thinking is changing. One sign of that shift is the U.S. Air Force’s 2016 It’s a $60 million deal with Atlanta startup Hermes Corp. through 2021 to support the company’s development of a hypersonic passenger vehicle. He said the service would announce future high-speed cargo or presidential transport aircraft.
In the same interview on September 1, he said, “I think they are serious about investing in this and supporting a record program in this area.” “I think this is a big change in thinking.”
Weed said he expects the number of companies interested in the project to land in the “dozens.” DIU expects to select multiple vendors, but the full scope of the effort and the cost to the department will depend on the responses.
“We’re just like, ‘We want to tag along with you, but we don’t want to drive the boat,'” he said. “We’re not trying to develop a program that has only military applications and only funding from the DoD.”
HyCAT is one of three new hypersonic-oriented projects at DIU. Weed declined to discuss the other opportunities in detail, but said they will be announced soon and will focus on technology development and finding new concepts for building hypersonic systems.
