The Defense Innovation Unit made the award as part of the Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities programme.
Engine maker GE Aerospace has secured additional funding from the US military to support development of a new hypersonic test platform.
The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit made the award on 1 September under the Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities (HyCAT) programme. GE had received an initial research and development grant for the project in 2023.
“Acceleration in this type of hypersonic testing are critical to advancing next-generation capabilities at speed and scale,” says Steve Russell, general manager of GE’s Edison Works advanced projects unit.
Hypersonic flight is generally defined as speeds at and above Mach 5 (3,307kt).
This latest contract will allow GE to design and develop an all-up-round (AUR) vehicle that can be used to test emerging hypersonic flight technologies and systems. GE says the new liquid-fuelled testbed will consist of two parts — a booster and a cruiser — which will combine to form the AUR platform.
The company tells FlightGlobal that its initial HyCAT design will not feature the rotating detonation engine technology GE has been developing as part of an experimental dual-mode ramjet the company says could someday enable a single aircraft to transition from subsonic to hypersonic flight under its own power.
A rendering of the HyCAT concept released by GE suggests the cruiser section will be powered by a scramjet engine that will take over after an initial acceleration by a lower-stage rocket booster. The company declines to provide specific details about how the AUR assembly will function.
While the initial HyCAT design will not incorporate rotating detonation combustion, Russell says that may change in the future.
“We anticipate future variants would,” he says.
GE demonstrated two rotating detonation engine designs in 2025 — one in the form of a missile-sized ramjet and another configured as a dual-mode ramjet for powering high-speed aircraft.
Next steps for GE in the HyCAT build will be component-level testing of key subsystems on the initial prototype and first qualification.
The development puts GE into direct competition with advanced aviation start-ups Stratolaunch and Hermeus — two US firms developing their own solutions for reusable hypersonic test vehicles.
Stratolaunch has already logged more than 10 hypersonic flights with its Talon-A — an uncrewed, rocket-powered aircraft that is ferried aloft beneath a captive-carry mothership.
The Talon-A is then air-dropped and starts to accelerate under the power of its single Ursa Major Hadley rocket engine, eventually returning to Earth conventionally on wheeled landing gear.
Stratolaunch confirmed its 10th hypersonic Talon-A flight in July.
Hypersonic competitor Hermeus has taken a different approach, with plans to build a single aircraft capable of taking off under its own power, accelerating to M5 and beyond, and then landing under its own power turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) propulsion system called Chimera.
That aircraft, dubbed Darkhorse, remains conceptual.
However, Hermeus is moving quickly through an iterative design process that has included flying subsonic and supersonic jets. The company began flying the subsonic Quarterhorse Mk 1 in 2025 and broke the sound barrier with the Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 in May of this year, reaching M1.21.
The successor Quarterhorse Mk 2.2 is readying for its first flight at the Spaceport America test site in New Mexico, with the goal of pushing into high-Mach, but sub-hypersonic speeds.
Hermeus says the current development timeline will see the delivery of an operational, reusable hypersonic capability before 2030.
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