DARPA reportedly also is poised to request $750 million from Congress starting in Fiscal 2009 to fund a new hypersonic aircraft project called Blackswift. According to InsideDefense.com (subscription required), the Pentagon will include the funding as part of its Fiscal 2009 budget submittal to Congress early next month. We believe word of the Blackswift name first publicly surfaced last May during a visit by DARPA official Steven Walker to Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee, the site of the hypersonic test facility to be used in ground testing. Last August one of Wired.com’s blogs noted Blackswift would be an extension of the Falcon hypersonic technology vehicle program (see above). According to Wired, Blackswift would use the HTV-3X designation and would be an “unmanned, fighter-sized aircraft” capable of airplane-like takeoffs and landings. A month later, Wired reported that DARPA had enlisted USAF in the program and got confirmation from a DARPA spokesperson that the recently signed memorandum of understanding concerned the Blackswift HTV-3X program. DARPA and USAF contracted a Lockheed Martin-Pratt & Whitney team to develop a combined-cycle powerplant under its Falcon Combined Cycle Engine Technology, or FaCET, program. Walker told AEDC officials that the Blackswift propulsion system would be a combination turbine engine and ramjet, “an all-in-one power plant.” The turbine engine would accelerate the vehicle to around Mach 3 before the ramjet would take over and boost the vehicle up to Mach 6.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.