The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Boeing to develop and flight test a prototype of its upcoming Glide Breaker hypersonic interceptor.

An interceptor is a weapon designed to destroy other missiles in flight before they reach their targets. The Glide Breaker is a giant leap forward in interceptor missile development, as it is designed to defeat a class of highly maneuverable weapons known as hypersonic gliders, which can perform sharp “zig-zag” maneuvers while gliding through the Earth’s atmosphere without power. at high speed. Mach 5 and above. (Mach 1 is the speed of sound; about 767 mph, or 1,234 km/h, at sea level.) This combination of speed and maneuverability makes such weapons much more difficult to defend against conventional missiles.

“Hypersonic vehicles are among the most dangerous and fast-moving threats to national security,” Gil Griffin, general manager of Boeing Phantom Works Advanced Weapons, said in the Boeing statement announcing the four-year agreement with DARPA, which also includes wind tunnel tests. Modelling. and flight tests of the Glide Breaker prototype. “We are focusing on the technological understanding needed to further enhance our nation’s anti-hypersonic capabilities and protect against future threats.”

Boeing’s contract with DARPA will fund simulations that will evaluate Glide Breaker designs using wind tunnel studies and computational fluid dynamics, computerized models of how a fluid (in this case, air) interacts with an object such as an interceptor missile.

In addition, Boeing will conduct tests to evaluate how the Glide Breaker’s jet engines affect its overall aerodynamics during firing to help maneuver the vehicle into position to engage hypersonic weapons in flight.

Because Glide Breaker, unlike weapon systems of the past, is designed to intercept rapidly evolving technologies, Boeing will need to use simulations that simulate the interaction that occurs between air and the interceptor at extreme speeds and altitudes.

“We are going as far as possible in terms of capturing an extremely fast object in an incredibly dynamic environment,” Griffin said in a statement. said.

In the Pentagon’s statement about the contract The report dated September 8 stated that Boeing’s Glide Breaker development agreement with DARPA was worth $70,554,525. Although DARPA has released several images, little is known about the Glide Breaker’s final design or overall capabilities. There are no details on the official DARPA program page.

Boeing said this Phase 2 contract “will lay the groundwork for future operational speedboat interceptors” that could defeat the ever-growing threat of hypersonic gliders.

In 2020, aerospace contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne signed an initial Phase 1 contract worth approximately $20 million to develop “support technologies” for the Glide Breaker. The second phase of the competition, which Boeing just won, started in 2022. Source