Government of Australia Funds $2.95M for World’s First Reusable Hypersonic UAV Project

10 April 2022

The Government of Australia has awarded a multimillion-dollar grant for the development of the DART CMP hypersonic unmanned aerial vehicle (image : Hipersonix)

Aerospace engineering business Hypersonix Launch Systems (“Hypersonix”) together with the University of Southern Queensland, LSM Advanced Composites (“LSM”) and New South Wales-based Romar Engineering (“Romar”) have been awarded a $2.95M Cooperative Research Centres Projects (“CRC-P”) grant from the Federal Government.

The project, titled ‘DART CMP Airframe – a reusable hypersonic platform’, is a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that can travel at hypersonic speeds up to Mach 12 (twelve times the speed of sound). It is powered by the SPARTAN hydrogen fuelled scramjet engine.

Scramjets take oxygen from the atmosphere, a fact that reduces weight by 60% compared to rockets. The development of new high temperature composite materials in this project will enable DART CMP to be reusable. With zero CO2 emissions thanks to the green hydrogen fuel, Hypersonix is leading a new era of ‘Green access to space’.

The project will deliver a new sovereign manufacturing capability for high temperature oxide-oxide ceramic matrix composites.

The deliverables include a complete UAV airframe including composite aeroshell and aerodynamic control surfaces, flight avionics, and hydrogen fuel system.

Hypersonix Managing Director David Waterhouse said DART CMP is the composite version of the DART AE due for launch in 2023.

“AE stands for Additive Engineering and is the fully 3D printed version out of high temperature alloys that are already available in Australia,” Mr Waterhouse said.

“The type of high temperature composites we require for DART CMP are currently not available here, therefore there is an urgent need to develop these materials in Australia.

See full article Hipersonix