Huntsville-based Dynetics has been awarded a contract to increase America’s capacity for hypersonic testing.
The Department of Defense contract was awarded through the Naval Surface Warfare Center to Dynetics and a team of 20 other support firms.
“This agreement for a new Hypersonics Test Bed will increase domestic capacity for hypersonic flight testing and leverage multiple commercially-available launch vehicles for ride-along hypersonic payloads,” the DOD said in announcing the contract.
The test bed will provide a centralized hypersonic testing capability available to the Army, Navy, Missile Defense Agency, Air Force, DOD researchers, industry and academia.
“Hypersonics are a top priority for our nation, and we’re honored to be a part of this innovative and vital initiative,” said Leidos’ Dynetics Group President Steve Cook.
DOD officials cite the need for more hypersonic testing as the basis for this project.
“In order to meet our objectives in hypersonics, we need to be able to launch flight tests much more regularly,” said Mike White, the principal director for hypersonics with the DOD project. “That’s how we accelerate learning throughout our portfolio of development and demonstration programs.”
“This program expands an important part of the Department’s hypersonic test efforts,” said George Rumford, director of DOD’s Test Resources Management Center. “In order for us to build the science and technology pipeline needed to develop next generation, leap-ahead capabilities, we must have an affordable test bed that can accommodate continuous flight testing.”
Partners on the project include Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, which also has operations in Alabama, plus Peraton, Stratolaunch, JRC Integrated Systems, NineTwelve Institute, Corvid, SpinLaunch, Varda, Kitty Hawk Technologies, Systima Division of Karman Space and Defense, Sandia National Laboratories, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, X-Bow Systems, RLNS and other hypersonic experts.
Neither Dynetics nor the DOD listed the dollar value of the contract.
Dynetics is a wholly owned subsidiary of Leidos.
