Air-drop requirement drives Air Force to unique hypersonic glide body design

By Jason Sherman / September 12, 2019 at 8:32 PM
The Air Force is developing its own variant of a hypersonic glide body that pairs an aeroshell common to Army and Navy hypersonic programs with an Air Force-unique substructure needed to withstand conditions when dropped mid-air from a fast-moving aircraft, according to the service. The Air Force has begun transitioning the building of service-specific elements of this glide body from a government laboratory to prime contractor Lockheed Martin as part of an effort to accelerate early fielding of the new...

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