World's fastest aircraft: what is known about NASA's experimental development the speed of which no other air vehicle ever managed to surpass

Military technology is evolving rapidly, and what was considered the height of excellence yesterday is no longer a surprise. However, one record from the past remains unattainable.

In this article, OBOZ. UA will tell you about the fastest aircraft in the history of aeronautics, the speed of which no one has yet managed to surpass.

Why the Boeing X-43 was created

The Boeing X-43 unmanned hypersonic aircraft, created in the United States in the late 90s, has been considered the fastest aircraft of all time for more than a quarter of a century now, including among the experimental projects, both operational and inactive.

This test aircraft, with several planned scale variants, was part of NASA's Hyper-X program, which was developing aircraft with a "scramjet" engine. Its immediate purpose was to test various aspects of hypersonic flight, a speed exceeding the speed of sound by at least 5 times.

As a result, NASA created three such vehicles. One of them was scrapped due to a serious malfunction in 2001, while the other two successfully set world records that still stand today.

Thus, the maximum speed of the X-43 reached 9.6 Max. One Max is equal to the speed of sound, which means it exceeded it 9.6 times and amounted to more than 11,000 km per hour.

The vehicles were tested in 2004. The scramjet engine of the aircraft was on for 10 seconds, and then the aircraft was to perform 10-minute hovering and crash into the Pacific Ocean.

Why the project was canceled

Regular flights of the X-43B were supposed to take place in 2009 after the X-43C tests were completed, but due to changes in NASA's strategic goals, they were canceled. And in 2006, the final decision was made to close the project and continue the development of a fundamentally new model - the Boeing X-51A Waverider hypersonic cruise missile, the first tests of which took place in 2010.

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