Aerospace

Aerospace

SR72 hypersonic spy drone could be flying by 2030

The SR-72 will travel at six times the speed of sound—the fastest military jet ever made—and fly as high as 80,000 feet. The SR-72,will evade assault, take spy photos, and attack targets at speeds of up to Mach 6. That’s twice as fast as its predecessor.
Aeronautical engineers at Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocket­dyne have been designing the SR-72 at their Skunk Works black site in California for the past several years. It will require a hybrid propulsion system: a conventional, off-the-shelf turbo jet that can take the plane from runway to Mach 3, and a hypersonic ramjet/scramjet that will push it the rest of the way.