Jane Edwards
A team at Air Force Research Laboratory completed a ground test of a Northrop Grumman-built scramjet engine at Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee.
Todd Barhorst, an aerospace engineer at AFRL and lead for the Medium Scale Critical Components program, said in a statement published Monday that the air-breathing hypersonic engine generated over 13,000 pounds of thrust during testing conducted by AFRL with Arnold Engineering Development Complex and Northrop.
“The scramjet successfully ran across a range of hypersonic Mach numbers for unprecedented run times, demonstrating that our technology is leading the way in delivering large scale hypersonic platforms to our warfighters,†said Pat Nolan, vice president for missile products at Northrop.
The 18-foot-long engine went through approximately 30 minutes of accumulated combustion time during a series of tests that spanned nine months.
