MOJAVE, Calif. — In Middle Eastern mythology, the Roc is a big bird, strong enough to hold an elephant in its talons.
Stratolaunch’s massive Roc aircraft, named after the griffin-like creature, can carry as much as 500,000 kilos of payload, the equivalent of greater than 33 large elephants. With a wingspan that stretches 385 feet, it’s the widest airplane in operation — and it takes up a whole hangar at the corporate’s manufacturing and test facilities on the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
“You truly need to get the aircraft out of the hangar to see the entire airplane,” Stratolaunch’s Senior Vice President for Engineering Aaron Cassebeer told C4ISRNET in an interview during a recent visit to the location.
Stratolaunch’s early vision for Roc was as an area launch platform. The aircraft, comprised of two Boeing 747 fuselages, would fly small rockets to high altitudes where they might then lift off into orbit. In 2019, the corporate modified course, refocusing its sights on a brand new mission: hypersonic flight testing.
The corporate is now preparing Roc to hold its Talon-A hypersonic test aircraft for its first hypersonic, or Mach 5, flight — potentially before the top of the yr.
While Talon-A will descend into the ocean following that first flight, the corporate is eyeing a second mission in early 2024 during which the system will reach hypersonic speeds and land on a runway.
The implications of a successful Talon-A test campaign are significant for the Defense Department’s hypersonic efforts, that are focused on developing and fielding high-speed weapons and defending against similar systems that China and Russia are constructing.
To get there, DoD is working to extend its testing rigor, setting a goal in 2022 to eventually conduct one flight each week. Today, most major hypersonic programs fly just a number of trials annually.
A system like Talon-A could provide the department with a reusable, more cost-effective platform to check and validate high-speed components, subsystems and other technologies, in response to Stratolaunch CEO Zachary Krevor.
“How do you actually exhibit that your critical technologies, your instrumentation, your materials are literally working within the flight environment? You will have to go fly,” he told C4ISRNET in a Dec. 2 interview. “The importance of us and our first flight is actually demonstrating [that] now there’s an inexpensive hypersonic capability coming online that’s going to generate an incredible amount of recent flight data that may very well be used all across the DoD community.”
Return on investment
The corporate hasn’t disclosed the price of a single Talon-A flight, but Krevor said it’s “an order of magnitude less” than the typical DoD hypersonic flight test, which sits around $100 million, in response to the Congressional Research Service.
As Stratolaunch works toward achieving a once-a-month flight test cadence, he expects the department to in a short time see the impact of that reduced cost.
“We must be providing that [return on investment] back to the DOD by the top of next yr or early 2025,” he said.
Within the lead as much as its first hypersonic mission, Stratolaunch’s engineers and flight crews have been preparing Roc and Talon-A through a series of ground and flight tests.
In May, an early Talon-A vehicle, dubbed TA-0, conducted what’s called a drop test where it was released from Roc and glided to a selected “aim point.” In late November, the corporate conducted a taxi test during which Talon-A was mated to Roc’s large pylon.
On Dec. 3, the pair of aircraft accomplished the primary captive carry flight, during which Talon-A was fueled with the identical propellants it’ll use for its first hypersonic flight. The high-speed aircraft didn’t separate from Roc, but flew for greater than three hours, providing data about Talon-A’s propulsion system and ensuring the telemetry systems on each aircraft were operating as expected.
The corporate told C4ISRNET in a Dec. 7 statement that while they’re still reviewing data from the flight, the aircraft appears to have performed as expected. While Stratolaunch is aiming for its initial hypersonic flight this yr, spokeswoman Kate Squires said post-flight reviews and next steps could push that plan to next yr.
“With the top of the yr fast approaching, we’ll take the time required to offer our customers maximum value via our rigorous and methodical test process,” Squires said. “Ensuring a rigorous set of next steps may end in a pivot of our powered flight to 2024.”
Talon-A production
As the corporate continues its data review and test preparations, it’s working in parallel to maneuver additional Talon-A vehicles through its production line. Round the corner to Roc’s hangar sits the hypersonic aircraft’s manufacturing facility where three more Talon-A aircraft sit in various stages of the assembly process.
The subsequent Talon-A in line, or TA-2, has most of its components installed. It recently began its functional testing phase, in response to Cassebeer, which involves installing its power systems and ensuring all of its subsystems are working as designed.
The corporate has demonstrated the power to fabricate three or 4 systems at one time, but Cassebeer said it’s not clear how much its manufacturing cadence will increase once it’s flying the Talon-A more often. That may depend, partly, on demand, but additionally on how well the reusable system is performing.
“The vehicles are reusable,” he said. “Once you’ve got a barn stuffed with vehicles, [production] may not actually be your limiting factor. . . . We don’t need to construct so many vehicles that now they’re just sitting there collecting dust.”
Given the Defense Department’s need for more flight test services, demand for a reusable Talon-A is already high. The corporate has a virtually full manifest for 2024 and is already on contract to support five test flights for the Navy Surface Warfare Center’s Multiservice Advanced Capability Test Bed program or MACH-TB.
Its first flight may even be integrated with the Test Resource Management Center’s Skyrange, which uses uncrewed systems to trace hypersonic vehicles in flight.
Stratolaunch recently accomplished the acquisition of a second carrier aircraft to assist accommodate Talon-A requirement — a Boeing 747 owned by Virgin Orbit before the corporate declared bankruptcy within the spring.
“As we gain those flight contracts, as we fly and we show that we’re successful, we expect that demand signal to proceed to extend,” Cassebeer said.
Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a give attention to the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on among the Defense Department’s most vital acquisition, budget and policy challenges.