The Air Force has had to postpone the planned May 25 maiden free flight of the X-51A hypersonic air vehicle because a freighter was transiting a portion of the Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center Sea Range several hundred miles off the California coast. A Navy P-3 aircraft spotted the ship as it was scanning the potential splashdown zone. The May 25 release from Edwards AFB, Calif., from which a B-52 would initially carry the X-51 aloft, said, “Weather permitting, the X-51A will make its first hypersonic flight attempt Wednesday May 26.”
After months of debate and sometimes public tension, the Space Force and Intelligence Community are making progress on establishing ways to work together, officials said this week—to the point where one predicted there will soon be “a sharing of data like we've never seen before.”