Research On The Development History Of US Hypersonic Aircrafts

Hypersonic aircrafts generally refers to that can travel at a speed of more than Mach 5 aerospace aircrafts, to achieve high-speed flight in the atmosphere and remotely across the atmosphere. The advantages are high speed, good concealment, strong penetration ability and combat effectiveness.Hypersonic aircrafts has a great influence on the future political, military and economic fields, and it is a kind of strategic deterrent force. At present, many countries in the world are actively developing hypersonic aircrafts, while the hypersonic aircrafts development of United States is in a leading position. For this reason, it is important to study the development of hypersonic aircrafts in the United States.The development of hypersonic aircrafts in the United States can be divided into three stages. The first stage is from the 1950 s, until the late 70 s. The second stage is the National Aerospace Plane(NASP) period. NASP proposed in 1986, was forced to suspend in 1995. The third stage is the National Aerospace Initiative(NAI) period. NAI proposed in 2001, so far the development of hypersonic aircrafts technology in the United States is still in the framework proposed by the NAI. In this paper, the development of hypersonic aircrafts in the United States is summarized. Paper was study the typical and representative of the phase three hypersonic aircrafts development plans, such as HyTech, the Hyper-X, ARRMD and X-51 A etc. The development of each plan is described in detail, and analyze the reasons for the success or failure of the plan.In this paper, after a systematic study of the development process of the US hypersonic aircrafts, summarized the key technologies for hypersonic aircrafts, discusses the US hypersonic aircrafts organization and management system, describes the strategic significance of the hypersonic aircrafts. Summarizes the experience in the development of the hypersonic aircrafts in the United States, and presents the enlightenment on hypersonic aircrafts development in our country.