US Air Force and DARPA developing a complete hypersonic vehicle by 2023 and China looking at morphing hypersonic vehicles

The Air Force and DARPA are researching and will build a next generation hypersonic vehicle by 2023. It will use some of the X-51 tech that is capable of operating "at the kind of temperatures you have when you are going at hypersonic speeds." They are developing a guidance system that can still function at Mach 5.

The Pentagon also hopes that costs could be lowered over a traditional turbine engine because of fewer parts in the hypersonic system.

Here is an open access article on the topic of hypersonic control and guidance by Chinese researchers. International Journal of Aerospace Engineering - Collaborative Deformation Design Using Control Integrated Analysis Methods for Hypersonic Waverider

Hypersonic waveriders have a large flight envelope, leading to the difficulty in keeping overall flight stability for a fixed geometry. Accordingly, hypersonic waveriders can be considered to design as a morphing vehicle such that the flight range is expanded for waveriding stability. To this end, this paper investigates the collaborative deformation design using control integrated analysis methods for the hypersonic waverider. Firstly, a parametric model is applied to combine the shape deformation with the geometrical properties. Secondly, the morphing process with regard to the change in a single geometric parameter and the static and dynamic characteristics affected by this deformation are analyzed. Afterwards, the collaborative relations are discussed for the changes in the lower forebody angle and elevon area. Furthermore, a flight control law is designed to guarantee flight stability while implementing the collaborative deformation, and the morphing results are evaluated based on the control-oriented idea. Finally, a simulation example is used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods for the hypersonic waverider.

A cancelled Blackswift hypersonic project design

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