Pentagon announces hypersonic testing pact with UK, Australia
The Pentagon on Monday announced a new hypersonic testing partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom, an agreement focused on improving facilities and information sharing across the three countries.
The partnership — dubbed the Hypersonic Flight Test and Experimentation project, or HyFliTE — will include up to six trilateral flight test campaigns set to occur by 2028. The intent is to increase the hypersonic testing cadence and leverage the three nations’ combined funding, facilities and experience.
“We are increasing our collective ability to develop and deliver offensive and defensive hypersonic technologies through a robust series of trilateral tests and experiments that will accelerate the development of hypersonic concepts and critical enabling technologies,” Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a statement.
The agreement falls within the second pillar of the trilateral defense pact known as AUKUS, which is focused on technology sharing and advanced capability development. Last year, the Pentagon announced a slew of joint exercises and prize challenges to boost collaboration in areas like autonomy and electronic warfare.
The announcement doesn’t offer details on the upcoming test campaigns, but notes that those efforts will draw from a funding pool of $252 million.
HyFliTE will build on past test efforts between the U.S. and Australia, who have been conducting hypersonic research together for more than 15 years. In 2017, they culminated a secretive decade-long effort known as the Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation, or HiFiRE. Through the program, they explored future high-speed weapons and subsystem designs and conducted a series of flight tests.
In 2020, the two nations launched a follow-on effort called the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment, or SCIFiRE. The program aimed to develop a Mach 5 precision strike missile powered by an air-breathing scramjet engine that would be carried by a tactical fighter aircraft. That work has fed into the U.S. Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile program.
Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.