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The DARPA Falcon Project (Force Application and Launch from Continental United States) is a two-part joint project between the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...
(DARPA) and the
United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
(USAF) and is part of
Prompt Global Strike Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is a United States military effort to develop a system that can deliver a precision-guided conventional weapon airstrike anywhere in the world within one hour, in a similar manner to a nuclear ICBM. Such a weapon wou ...
. One part of the program aims to develop a reusable, rapid-strike ''
Hypersonic In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds 5 times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since in ...
Weapon System'' (HWS), now retitled the ''Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle'' (HCV), and the other is for the development of a launch system capable of accelerating an HCV to cruise speeds, as well as launching small satellites into Earth orbit. This two-part program was announced in 2003 and continued into 2006.FALCON Force Application and Launch from CONUS Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) PHASE I Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) for BAA Solicitation 03-35
. DARPA, 2003.
''Blackswift'' was a project announced under the Falcon banner using a fighter-sized unmanned aircraft which would take off from a runway and accelerate to before completing its mission and landing again. The memo of understanding (MoU) between DARPA and the USAF on Blackswift—also known as the HTV-3X—was signed in September 2007. The Blackswift HTV-3X did not receive needed funding and was canceled in October 2008. Current research under FALCON program is centered on
X-41 Common Aero Vehicle __NOTOC__ X-41 is the designation, initiated in 2003, for a still-classified United States military spaceplane. The X-41 is now part of the FALCON (Force Application and Launch from Continental United States) program sponsored by DARPA and NASA. ...
(CAV), a common aerial platform for hypersonic
ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...
s and
cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...
s, as well as civilian RLVs and ELVs. The prototype
Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) is an experimental hypersonic glide vehicle developed as part of the DARPA Falcon Project designed to fly in the Mach number, Mach 20 range. It is a test bed for technologies to provide the United States wit ...
(HTV-2) first flew on 22 April 2010; the second test flew 11 August 2011 reaching Mach 20. Both flights ended prematurely.


Design and development


Past projects

The aim was always to be able to deploy a craft from the continental United States, which could reach anywhere on the planet within one to two hours. The
X-20 Dyna-Soar The Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar ("Dynamic Soarer") was a United States Air Force (USAF) program to develop a spaceplane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including aerial reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite mainten ...
in 1957 was the first publicly acknowledged program—although this would have been launched vertically on a rocket and then glided back to Earth, as the
Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...
did, rather than taking off from a runway. Originally, the Shuttle was envisaged as a part-USAF operation, and separate military launch facilities were built at
Vandenberg AFB Vandenberg Space Force Base , previously Vandenberg Air Force Base, is a United States Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. Established in 1941, Vandenberg Space Force Base is a space launch base, launching spacecraft from th ...
at great cost, though never used. After the open DynaSoar USAF program from 1957 to 1963, spaceplanes went
black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
(became highly classified). In the mid-1960s, the CIA began work on a high-Mach spyplane called
Project Isinglass Project Isinglass was the code name given to two heavily classified, crewed reconnaissance aircraft studied by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as potential replacements for the Lockheed A-12 and SR-71 during the mid-1960s. The first prop ...
. This developed into Rheinberry, a design for a Mach-17 air-launched reconnaissance aircraft, which was later canceled. According to
Henry F. Cooper Henry may refer to: People * Henry (given name) *Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal ...
, who was the Director of the
Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic ...
("Star Wars") under President Reagan, spaceplane projects consumed $4 billion of funding in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (excluding the Space Shuttle). This does not include the 1950 and 1960s budgets for the Dynasoar, ISINGLASS, Rheinberry, and any 21st-century spaceplane project which might emerge under Falcon. He told the
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...
in 2001 that all the United States had in return for those billions of dollars was "one crashed vehicle, a
hangar queen A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...
, some drop-test articles and static displays". Falcon was allocated US$170 million for budget year 2008.


HyperSoar

The HyperSoar was an American
hypersonic In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds 5 times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since in ...
aircraft project developed at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
(LLNL). It was to be capable of flying at around Mach 12 (9,200 mph, 14,700 km/h), allowing it to transit between any two points on the globe in under two hours. The HyperSoar was predicted to be a passenger plane capable of skipping outside the
atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...
to prevent it from burning up in the atmosphere. A trip from Chicago to Tokyo (10,123 kilometers) would take 18 skips, or 72 minutes. It was planned to use hydrocarbon-based engines outside the atmosphere and experimental jet engine technology with testing to begin by 2010. Later, the Hypersoar concept was acquired from LLNL by DARPA, and in 2002 it was combined with the USAF X-41 Common Aero Vehicle to form the FALCON program.


FALCON

The overall FALCON (''F''orce ''A''pplication and ''L''aunch from ''CON''tinental United States) program announced in 2003 had two major components: a small
launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pad, launch pads, supported by a missile launch contro ...
for carrying payloads to orbit or launching the hypersonic weapons platform payload, and the hypersonic vehicle itself.


Small Launch Vehicle

The DARPA FALCON solicitation in 2003 asked for bidders to do development work on proposed vehicles in a first phase of work, then one or more vendors would be selected to build and fly an actual launch vehicle. Companies which won first phase development contracts of $350,000 to $540,000 in November 2003 included:USAF DARPA FALCON Program
. Air-attack.com. Retrieved: 2012-02-05.
*
AirLaunch LLC AirLaunch was an aerospace design and development company headquartered in Kirkland, Washington. They had hoped to provide launch services for launching payloads into orbits around the Earth. This was to be realized through a method called air ...
, Reno Nevada * Andrews Space Inc., Seattle Washington * Exquadrum Inc., Victorville California. * KT Engineering, Huntsville Alabama *
Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It ...
Corp., New Orleans Louisiana * Microcosm Inc., El Segundo California * Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles Virginia * Schafer Corp., Chelmsford Massachusetts * Space Exploration Technologies, Hawthorne California


Hypersonic Weapon System

The first phase of the
hypersonic weapon Hypersonic weapons are weapons travelling at hypersonic speed – at between 5 and 25 times the speed of sound, about . Below such speeds, weapons would be characterized as subsonic or supersonic, while above such speeds, the molecules of the ...
system development was won by three bidders in 2003, each receiving a $1.2 to $1.5 million contract for hypersonic vehicle development: * Andrews Space Inc., Seattle, Wash. * Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Palmdale, Calif. * Northrop Grumman Corp., Air Combat Systems, El Segundo, Calif. Lockheed Martin received the only Phase 2 HWS contract in 2004, to develop technologies further and reduce technology risk on the program.


Follow-on hypersonic program

Following the Phase 2 contract, DARPA and the US Air Force continued to develop the hypersonic vehicle platform. The program was to follow a set of flight tests with a series of hypersonic technology vehicles.Falcon Technology Demonstration Program: Fact Sheet
. ''DARPA'', January 2006.
The FALCON project includes: *
X-41 Common Aero Vehicle __NOTOC__ X-41 is the designation, initiated in 2003, for a still-classified United States military spaceplane. The X-41 is now part of the FALCON (Force Application and Launch from Continental United States) program sponsored by DARPA and NASA. ...
(CAV): a common aerial platform for hypersonic
ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...
s and
cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...
s, as well as civilian RLVs and ELVs. * Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 1 (HTV-1): a test concept, originally planned to fly in September 2007, now canceled. *
Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) is an experimental hypersonic glide vehicle developed as part of the DARPA Falcon Project designed to fly in the Mach number, Mach 20 range. It is a test bed for technologies to provide the United States wit ...
(HTV-2): first flew on 22 April 2010, but contact was lost soon after booster separation"US hypersonic glider flunks first test flight"
. ''
AFP news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency. AFP has regional headquarters in Nicosia, Montevideo, Hong Kong and Washington, D. ...
'', 27 March 2010.
* HTV-3X: Blackswift, now canceled The Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) would be able to fly 9,000 nautical miles (17,000 km) in 2 hours with a payload of 12,000 lb (5,500 kg). It would fly at a high
altitude Altitude or height (also sometimes known as depth) is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context ...
and achieve speeds of up to Mach 20.


Blackswift

The Blackswift was a proposed aircraft capable of hypersonic flight designed by the
Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It ...
Skunk Works Skunk Works is an official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. It is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, beginning with the Lockheed P-38 Lightn ...
,
Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...
, and ATK. The USAF states that the "Blackswift flight demonstration vehicle will be powered by a combination
turbine engine A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directi ...
and
ramjet A ramjet, or athodyd (aero thermodynamic duct), is a form of airbreathing jet engine that uses the forward motion of the engine to produce thrust. Since it produces no thrust when stationary (no ram air) ramjet-powered vehicles require an ass ...
, an all-in-one power plant. The turbine engine accelerates the vehicle to around Mach 3 before the ramjet takes over and boosts the vehicle up to Mach 6." Dr. Steven Walker, the Deputy Director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office (acting Director as of January, 2017), will be coordinating the project. He told the USAF website, The Falcon program has announced the hypersonic horizontal take-off Blackswift/HTV-3X. It is also launching the HTV-2 off the top of a rocket booster. Falcon seems to be converging from two directions, on the ultimate goal of producing a hypersonic aircraft which can take off and land from a runway in the US, and be anywhere in the world in an hour or two. Falcon is methodically proceeding toward a Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle. Dr. Walker stated, In October 2008 it was announced that HTV-3X or Blackswift did not receive needed funding in the fiscal year 2009 defense budget and had been canceled. The Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle program will continue with reduced funding."Falcon Technology Demonstration Program HTV-3X Blackswift Test Bed"
. DARPA, October 2008.
Trimble, Stephen

. ''
Flight Global FlightGlobal is an online news and information website which covers the aviation and aerospace industries. The website was established in February 2006 as the website of ''Flight International'' magazine, ''Airline Business'', ''ACAS'', ''Air ...
'', 13 October 2008. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
File:DARPA Falcon HTV-3X 1.jpg, Falcon HTV-3X File:DARPA Falcon HTV-3X 2.jpg, The HTV-3X activates its turbojets in transonic flight... File:DARPA Falcon HTV-3X 3.jpg, ...then ignites its
scramjet A scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow. As in ramjets, a scramjet relies on high vehicle speed to compress the incoming air forcefully ...
s for the hypersonic phase File:DARPA Falcon HTV-3X 4.jpg, HTV-3X on approach to
Edwards Air Force Base Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force installation in California. Most of the base sits in Kern County, but its eastern end is in San Bernardino County and a southern arm is in Los Angeles County. The hub of the base is E ...


Flight testing

DARPA had two HTV-2s built for two flight tests in 2010 and 2011. The
Minotaur IV Minotaur IV, also known as Peacekeeper SLV and OSP-2 PK is an active expendable launch system derived from the LGM-118 Peacekeeper ICBM. It is operated by Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, and made its maiden flight on 22 April 2010, carrying ...
light rocket is the booster for the HTV-2 with
Vandenberg Space Force Base Vandenberg Space Force Base , previously Vandenberg Air Force Base, is a United States Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. Established in 1941, Vandenberg Space Force Base is a space launch base, launching spacecraft from th ...
(known as Vandenberg Air Force Base from 1957-2021)serving as the launch site. DARPA planned the flights to demonstrate thermal protection systems and aerodynamic control features. Test flights were supported by
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
, the
Space and Missile Systems Center Space Systems Command (SSC) is the United States Space Force's space development, acquisition, launch, and logistics field command. It is headquartered at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California and manages the United States' space launch ...
,
Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It ...
,
Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Ba ...
and the
Air Force Research Laboratory The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is a scientific research organization operated by the United States Air Force Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery, development, and integration of aerospace warfighting technologies, pl ...
's (AFRL) Air Vehicles and Space Vehicles Directorates. The first HTV-2 flight was launched on 22 April 2010."First Minotaur IV Lite launches from Vandenberg"
. U.S. Air Force, 22 April 2010.
The HTV-2 glider was to fly across the
Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
to
Kwajalein Kwajalein Atoll (; Marshallese: ) is part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). The southernmost and largest island in the atoll is named Kwajalein Island, which its majority English-speaking residents (about 1,000 mostly U.S. civilia ...
at Mach 20.Little, Geoffrey
"Mach 20 or Bust, Weapons research may yet produce a true spaceplane"
. Air & Space Magazine, 1 September 2007.
The launch was successful, but the first mission was not completed as planned. Reports stated that contact had been lost with the vehicle nine minutes into the mission.Clark, Stephen

. spaceflightnow.com, 23 April 2010.
In mid-November, DARPA revealed that the test flight had ended when the computer autopilot had "commanded flight termination". According to a DARPA spokesman, "When the onboard system detects ndesirable or unsafe flightbehavior, it forces itself into a controlled roll and pitchover to descend directly into the ocean." Reviews found that the craft had begun to roll violently. A second flight was launched on 11 August 2011. The unmanned Falcon HTV-2 successfully separated from the booster and entered the mission's glide phase, but again lost contact with control about nine minutes into its planned 30-minute Mach 20 glide flight. Initial reports indicated it purposely impacted the Pacific Ocean along its planned flight path as a safety precaution. Some analysts thought that the second failure would result in an overhaul of the Falcon program.


Refocus

In July 2013, DARPA decided it would not conduct a third flight test of the HTV-2 because enough data had been collected from the first two flights, and another test was not thought to provide any more usable data for the cost. The tests provided data on flight aerodynamics and high-temperature effects on the aeroshell. Work on the HTV-2 would continue to summer 2014 to provide more study on hypersonic flight. The HTV-2 was the last active part of the Falcon program. DARPA has now changed its focus for the program from global/strategic strike to high-speed tactical deployment to penetrate air defenses and hit targets quickly from a safe distance.Darpa Refocuses Hypersonics Research On Tactical Missions
- Aviationweek.com, 8 July 2013


See also

*
Boeing X-51 The Boeing X-51 Waverider is an unmanned research scramjet experimental aircraft for hypersonic flight at and an altitude of . The aircraft was designated X-51 in 2005. It completed its first powered hypersonic flight on 26 May 2010. After t ...
*
Prompt Global Strike Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is a United States military effort to develop a system that can deliver a precision-guided conventional weapon airstrike anywhere in the world within one hour, in a similar manner to a nuclear ICBM. Such a weapon wou ...
, a follow-on military project *
Rockwell X-30 The Rockwell X-30 was an advanced technology demonstrator project for the National Aero-Space Plane (NASP), part of a United States project to create a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spacecraft and passenger spaceliner. Started in 1986, it was canc ...
(National AeroSpace Plane) *
Lockheed Martin SR-72 The Lockheed Martin SR-72, colloquially referred to as "Son of Blackbird", is an American hypersonic UAV concept intended for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) proposed privately in 2013 by Lockheed Martin as a successor to t ...
*
Boost-glide Non-ballistic atmospheric entry is a class of atmospheric entry trajectories that follow a non-ballistic trajectory by employing aerodynamic lift in the high upper atmosphere. It includes trajectories such as skip and glide. Skip is a flight tr ...


References


External links


Falcon page on Darpa.mil



"Air Drops Dummy Rocket for Darpa's Falcon"
Aviation Week,



an

* ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38272-2005Mar15 "Pentagon Has Far-Reaching Defense Spacecraft in Works" Washington Post, March 16, 2005
"US hypersonic aircraft projects face change as Congress urges joint technology office"
Flight International, 30 May 2006 {{DEFAULTSORT:Darpa Falcon Project Hypersonic aircraft DARPA projects Air Force Research Laboratory projects