DARPA

DARPA has chosen two radically different designs from teams led by General Atomics and Aurora Flight Systems for development of the Liberty Lifter Seaplane Wing-in-Ground Effect full-scale seaborne strategic and tactical heavy lift demonstrator.

A DARPA-led project has successfully completed the final test of Lockheed Martin's Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) missile. Powered by an Aerojet Rocketdyne scramjet, the craft reached a speed in excess of Mach 5 over a course 300 nm.

NASA and DARPA have agreed to develop and test a nuclear rocket engine in space as soon as 2027. Using a nuclear reactor as its power source, it would outperform chemical rockets and greatly reduce the time for the first crewed Mars mission.

DARPA has awarded Aurora Flight Sciences a phase 2 contract for its CRANE (Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors) program, following wind tunnel testing of a small-scale X-plane that uses compressed air bursts instead of control surfaces.

The line between crewed and uncrewed aircraft has blurred even more after a Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter carried out a demonstration cargo mission as well as a medical "emergency rescue" entirely on its own without anyone aboard or human guidance.

DARPA has announced that it has given the green light to a new series of field tests at Camp Roberts, California, aimed at producing autonomous off-road combat vehicles that can keep up with crewed ones while driving at speed over rough ground.

The US hypersonic weapons program has reached a major milestone, with a Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) hypersonic cruise missile developed by Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman completing two successful flight tests in a row.

Researchers at Rice University have shown how they can hack the brains of fruit flies to make them remote controlled. The flies performed a specific action within a second of a command being sent to certain neurons in their brain.

In a double-shot of hypersonics news, the US Air Force has conducted an air-launched flight test of its AGM-183A hypersonic missile, while DARPA has successfully test fired a prototype of its OpFires ground-based hypersonic missile launch system.

DARPA has launched a new "Liberty Lifter" program to design, build and test a highly-efficient wing-in-ground effect aircraft for transporting "very large, heavy loads" over long distances without runways. Prototypes could fly as early as 2027.

DARPA has selected Raytheon BBN to lead a team to develop an augmented reality device that can act as a virtual assistant for combat medics, guiding them through 50 different medical procedures using artificial intelligence.

DARPA, the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), Lockheed Martin, and Aerojet Rocketdyne have successfully conducted a second test flight of a Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) hypersonic missile, over an undisclosed location.