Hypersonic

Australia's Hypersonix Launch Systems has made a historic launch of its next-generation DART AE hypersonic aircraft from Wallops Island, Virginia. Taking off aboard Rocket Lab's HASTE launch vehicle, the DART AE reached a top speed of Mach 8.

Aerospace and defense company Ursa Major aims to bring greater containment and control to hypersonic flight with its HAVOC missile – a medium-range vehicle capable of flying in excess of Mach 5, yet designed for low cost and high-volume production.

Two revolutionary aerospace technologies collide as GE Aerospace and Lockheed Martin team up to demonstrate a new liquid-fueled rotating-detonation ramjet (RDRJ) designed to close the "efficiency gap" in hypersonic flight with new tactical inlets.

Hypersonic vehicles aren't much use if you don't know where they're going, so Northrop Grumman is developing new navigation systems for autonomous craft that can stand up to the rigors of flying at speeds of over Mach 5.

What has zero moving parts, yet can blast an aerial vehicle to velocities beyond Mach 5? The answer is the recently flight-tested Atmospheric Test of Launched Airbreathing System (ATLAS) powered by a new solid-fueled ramjet built by GE Aerospace.

Proving that you can't keep a good technology down, Reaction Engines' Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) has a new lease on life after a British-led consortium announced Invictus, a new program to build a Mach 5+ spaceplane.

More than 20 years after the last commercial Concorde flight, President Trump has signed an executive order to repeal the ban on supersonic flight over land across the US. That paves the way for companies building the ultra-fast planes of the future.

Hermeus seems dead keen on fast-tracking its way to hypersonic passenger flight. Its uncrewed subsonic Quarterhorse Mark 1 prototype has completed its maiden flight in the skies over Edwards Air Force Base in California on May 21, 2025.

In what may be a world first, Venus Aerospace has, for the first time in the US, successfully flown a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) that uses supersonic explosions to create thrust. Such engines could help propel future hypersonic vehicles.

Looking like something out of Minecraft, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has released a new image of its latest electromagnetic railgun being developed by the Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics Agency (ATLA) to counter hypersonic missiles.

Britain's Ministry of Defence, with the help of the United States, has achieved what is being billed as a major hypersonic propulsion test of a new engine design that could power a cutting-edge hypersonic cruise missile for UK armed forces by 2030.

In a major defense milestone, the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Pinckney (DDG-91) has successfully completed a simulated engagement with a live hypersonic missile in the waters off the Hawaiian Islands.