Russia plans to fly new hypersonic scramjet prototypes in 2019 or 2020

Russia’s Gromov Flight Research Institute (LII) expects its latest GLL-AP-02 hypersonic scramjet test vehicle to fly in “three or four years,” with officials telling Flightglobal that funding constraints and technical issues have slowed progress.

LII’s Sergei Pernitsky and Sergei Vasilievich said via a translator at the MAKS air show in Moscow that work on the flight sciences vehicle is progressing, but slowly.

“Mostly because of the lack of funding, but there are lots of difficulties despite the funding because this project is very ambitious,” they explain.

GLL-AP-02 is the Russian equivalent of America’s Boeing X-51 and China’s “WU-14”. It is the latest in a series of Russian rocket-boosted hypersonic test vehicles, proceeding the GLL-VK and GLL-31 projects.

SOURCES – FlightGlobal