British company Reaction Engines is testing its hypersonic engine technology with the US Department of Defense and hopes to demonstrate that its precooler can be integrated with existing jet engines to enable them to run at Mach 4 and above.

The new tests are being conducted in partnership with the US Department of Defense and the US Air Force Research Laboratory as part of the Foreign Benchmark Testing Program, which the US military uses to identify high TRL (Technology Readiness Level) technologies that can be fast and costly. – Effectively meeting current and emerging needs.

The technology in question is a groundbreaking precooler that is an essential part of Reaction’s SABER, or synergistic air-breathing rocket engine. The SABER engine, still in development, is a jet/rocket hybrid that promises to operate like a super-fast jet for hypersonic flight up to Mach 5 in the atmosphere and then deploy its rockets to accelerate to Mach 25 for entry into space.

Such speeds would not exist without the Abnormal Reaction fuse, a type of radiator on steroids tasked with taking a hypersonic stream of air heated to over 1,000 °C (1,832 °F) and cooling it to -150 °C. -302°F) faster as it will melt the internal parts of the engine.

Therefore, it requires a large surface area, which it achieves by using thousands and thousands of thin-walled pipes where zero leakage is a crucial factor, where the refrigerant is forced under high pressure. Reaction says they’ve found a way to connect all those heatsinks to the intake and exhaust manifolds in a single process that eliminates leaks.

The company successfully tested the precooler at speeds up to Mach 5 in ground tests in 2019, and this new test campaign will build on that work, increasing mass airflow and other test parameters, providing a “three-fold increase in total”. energy transfer through the engine’s heat exchanger.”