While the United States is hypersonic and lagging behind, and the transportation of goods by rocket ships poses great scientific questions, the United States is ultimately determined to be a risk-tolerant country for science and technology experiments that will enable great advances in the future. approach, he said. An Air Force Research Lab technician said.

Speaking at the 8th annual Defense One Tech Summit, AFRL chief technology officer Timothy Banning said the lab is making extensive use of simulations and virtual environments in advanced hypersonic weapons. Stated. But while the United States is making progress, it still lacks the scope of experimentation necessary to act as quickly as it wishes.

“At the moment, we probably don’t have what it takes to operate at a reasonable speed,” he said.

Banning is not the first Pentagon science and technology official to mention the lack of adequate test coverage for hypersonic development. Even after the US entered into a joint testing agreement with Australia in 2019, the range issue “has not been resolved.” They came back and said that’s the biggest threat to the portfolio right now.”

The United States lags behind China and Russia in deploying advanced hypersonic weapons. Russia actively uses such weapons in Ukraine. At the same time, the United States is committed to various research efforts, some of which are doing better than others.

But when Mr. Banning delves into the “failures,” he sees them reverting back to the position they had in 2012, when the United States first turned away from hypersonic research and development in response to new “failures,” and to pursue research with China and Russia. He warned that inequalities could materialize. .

“These are complex systems and sometimes things go wrong, and we have to be tolerant of that failure. I know for sure that the other side is doing a lot of testing. , has failed all the time, and perhaps there is no political, public, or negative pressure that comes with testing.”

And military leaders and lawmakers are finally in a position to support an ambitious experiment, he said. “I think there is a realization that we are moving out of an era where you can do what you want in a permissive environment…so we need to change the kit we have now. And technology needs to evolve, and with that comes the need to do things with a slightly different risk posture than perhaps 10 years ago, so the conversations with Congress have been very positive.”

The institute is also transferring airwalk and network warfare efforts to the Air Force for record programs.

One of the institute’s efforts, still in its infancy, is Rocket Cargo, which focuses on using hypersonic technology to move key goods from one point on the planet to another. The focus is on reducing the time it takes to move weapons and hardware from days to hours. .

“We’re breaking down the problem into technical pieces and trying to do real proof-of-concept experiments, not only in the computer, but in the real world,” he said.

The lab is working on this research effort in partnership with SpaceX, but there is still a long way to go before it gets the go-ahead, largely because it wants answers to questions that have never been asked before. It takes “If you throw a big cargo pack out the back of a C-130 parachuting at 10,000 feet, it will fall. Is there something bigger? … How can we quickly reconfigure a landing pad with the right performance specifications? Is there a new technology that makes that possible?”

The lab is still working to determine if the idea is really viable, he said. But asking these questions is a “high-risk, high-return activity.”

“What the team is trying to do, you know, is ask the ‘what if?’ Question. Can this be done on a quantitative scale? One day when the team gets together, we’re going to evaluate it.”

Mr. Banning’s session will air Wednesday at noon.