Demo
    Engineers work on attaching a missile under the wing of a large military aircraft on an outdoor airfield. There are tools and equipment on the ground, and the aircraft's landing gear is visible.
    An X-51A Waverider undergoes preparations for a 2009 captive-carry flight. The U.S. Air Force is aiming to put bigger demonstrators in the air in five years.
    Diagram depicting a scramjet-powered cruiser (4.3 meters long), a flow-through interstage, and a modified Army Tactical Missile booster. Uses Jet Propellant-7.
    FLYING FREE: The decade-old X-51A engine design marks the starting point for the U.S. initiative to scale up the thrust performance of such air-breathing designs by a factor of 10. After separating from their boosters and interstages, the diminutive X-51A cruisers proved that combustion could be maintained for minutes in a supersonic combustion ramjet engine.
    A comparison chart of the X-51A and X-43A hypersonic aircraft, detailing their flight durations, speeds, vehicle lengths, propellants, contractors, and sponsors.
    A view inside an industrial facility showing machinery with numerous cables and wires attached. The image includes timestamp and measurement data overlayed on the top part.
    This Aerojet Rocketdyne engine generated in excess of 58 kilonewtons of thrust during tests in a wind tunnel at the Arnold Engineering Development Complex in Tennessee, the company announced last month. The engine could accelerate a vehicle 10 times larger than the X-51A, the company said.