On Monday, the Pentagon announced a new hypersonic testing partnership involving Australia and the United Kingdom. This agreement is focused on enhancing facilities and information sharing among the three nations.
The partnership is named the Hypersonic Flight Test and Experimentation project, abbreviated as HyFliTE. It aims to conduct up to six trilateral flight test campaigns by the year 2028. The objective of this initiative is to increase the frequency of hypersonic testing and to leverage the combined funding, facilities, and expertise of the three countries.
Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, commented, “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.”
This agreement is part of the second pillar of the AUKUS defense pact, which emphasizes technology sharing and advanced capability development among the U.S., Australia, and the UK. Last year, the Pentagon announced various joint exercises and prize challenges aimed at enhancing collaboration in fields like autonomy and electronic warfare.
The announcement specified that the upcoming test campaigns will be funded from a pool amounting to $252 million, although it did not disclose further details about the specific campaigns.
HyFliTE will continue the collaboration that has existed between the U.S. and Australia for over 15 years regarding hypersonic research. In 2017, they concluded a decade-long initiative called the Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HiFiRE), where they investigated future high-speed weapon designs through a series of flight tests.
In 2020, a follow-up program called the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE) was launched, aimed at developing a Mach 5 precision strike missile utilizing an air-breathing scramjet engine to be deployed by tactical fighter aircraft. This program has contributed to the U.S. Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile project.
Courtney Albon, the author of this report, is a space and emerging technology reporter for C4ISRNET and has covered the U.S. military since 2012, focusing on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported extensively on significant challenges concerning acquisition, budget, and policy in the Defense Department.
