Because DARPA’s Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept doesn’t exit and re-enter the atmosphere like boost-glide hypersonics, it is less reliant on costly exotic materials for thermal management.
You can imagine a reusable system that can fly around and drop payloads and come back, or a hypersonic system that can carry other hypersonic systems," said Gillian Bussey, head of DoD's Joint Hypersonics Transition Office.
It’s about improving existing platforms with autonomy, and applying AI, edge computing, quantum encryption, and sensor fusion.
The Pentagon will retain strict security protocols to ensure “we’re not training Chinese scientists that are going to go help their programs" said Gillian Bussey, head of the Joint Hypersonic Transition Office