Boeing X-51. The Boeing X-51 (also known as X-51 WaveRider) is an unmanned scramjet demonstration aircraft for hypersonic (Mach 6, approximately 4,000 miles per hour (6,400 km/h) at altitude) flight testing. It completed its first powered hypersonic flight on 26 May 2010. After two unsuccessful test flights, the X-51 completed a flight of over six minutes and reached speeds of over Mach 5 for 210 seconds on 1 May 2013 for the longest duration hypersonic flight. The X-51 is named "WaveRider" because it uses its shock waves to add lift. The program is run as a cooperative effort of the United States Air Force, DARPA, NASA, Boeing, and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. The program is managed by the Aerospace Systems Directorate within the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).[2][3] X-51 technology will be used in the High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW), a Mach 5+ missile planned to enter service in the mid-2020s.
Design and development[edit] Testing[edit] Ground tests of the X-51A began in late 2006. Special Forces' Gigapixel Flying Spy Sees All | Danger Room. You may think your new ten-megapixel camera is pretty hot –- but not when you compare it to the 1.8 Gigapixel beast built for the Pentagon. The camera is designed as a payload for the A-160T Hummingbird robot helicopter now being quietly delivered to Special Forces.
It will give them an unprecedented ability to track everything on the ground in real time. The camera is scheduled for flight testing at the start of next year. Developed under the auspices of Darpa, the camera is the sensor part of Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance – Imaging System or ARGUS-IS. The camera is composed of four arrays, each containing 92 five-megapixel imagers. The Hummingbird is unique in its ability to hover at high altitude (over 15,000 feet) and its endurance of over 20 hours. The volume of data is too great to be completely transmitted, but users will be able to define at least sixty-five independent video windows within the image and zoom in or out at will.
[Image: DARPA] Assessing the Sukhoi PAK-FA / Sukhoi/KnAAPO T-50/I-21/Article 701 PAK-FA Перспективный Авиационный Комплекс Фронтовой Авиации. The first high quality in flight image of the prototype to be released by Sukhoi/KnAAPO. Closer inspection of the details in this image, particularly the absence of surface mounted INSTM on the fully articulated fin control surfaces suggests this image is from a different flight and might even be an in-flight image of another prototype airframe (Sukhoi). The PAK-FA was quickly dubbed by Western observers as the “Raptor-ski” or “F-22-ski”. This label is reasonable in terms of the niche the aircraft is intended to occupy, as it is intended to directly challenge the F-22A Raptor, but this label is quite inaccurate in terms of the configuration of the aircraft and its detailed design.
In the broadest of terms, the PAK-FA is a fusion of ideas and design features seen in late model Flanker variants and demonstrators, but incorporating specific stealth shaping features employed previously in the Northrop/MDC YF-23 ATF demonstrator, and the production LM F-22 Raptor. PAK-FA Low Observable Design. FGFA WIP by ~parijatgaur on deviantART. M1400-Overview-Apr-12_v4. Company: JLENS. Home | www.802u.com.