DARPA Falcon Project

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The DARPA FALCON Project (Force Application and Launch from Continental United States) was a two-part joint project between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the United States Air Force (USAF) and is part of Prompt Global Strike.^[1] The first part of the project aimed to develop a Small Launch System (SLS) capable of accelerating hypersonic gliding weapons as well as launching small satellites into Earth orbit. The second part of the project aimed to develop Hypersonic Weapon Systems (HWS): a short term high performance hypersonic gliding weapon previously named the X-41 Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) that could be launched from Expendable Launch Vehicles (ELV), Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs), Hypersonic Cruise Vehicles (HCV), or Space Maneuvering Vehicles (SMP), and a long term hypersonic cruise aircraft named the Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV). This two-part program was announced in 2003 and continued into 2006.^[2]

Current research under Falcon project is centered on the flight tests of boost-glide technological demonstrators HTV-1 and HTV-2 for the development of the X-41 Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) and HTV-3 for the Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV). The technological demonstrator Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) first flew on 22 April 2010; the second test flew 11 August 2011 reaching Mach 20. Both flights ended prematurely.^[3][4]

The HTV-3X Blackswift, derived from HTV-3, was a technological demonstrator of the HCV which would take off from a runway and accelerate to Mach 6 (7,400 km/h; 4,600 mph) before completing its mission and landing again. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) between DARPA and the USAF on Blackswift was signed in September 2007. The Blackswift HTV-3X did not receive needed funding and was canceled in October 2008.^[5]