Watch: 'Top Gun 2' Scene Where Maverick Pushes Mach 10 in Concept Jet Is Closer Than Ever
Amazing though they may be, the “Top Gun” films are not known for realism.
No, Maverick and Goose couldn’t have flipped upside down and flown their F-14 mere inches away from the cockpit of a Russian MiG. Pilots don’t chase planes down the runway on a motorcycle. And, although “Top Gun: Maverick” might have suggested otherwise, there is no Mach 10 hypersonic attack jet being kept under wraps.
Well. At least not yet.
Thanks to a company called Hermeus, we’re one step closer to a hypersonic plane that can be flown from normal airfields.
According to CNN, Hermeus is a startup that’s hoping to deliver a Mach 5 hypersonic (capable of traveling at five times the speed of sound) passenger airliner. The company is currently working on a small unmanned plane for the Air Force.
“That passenger plane is a long way away — Hermeus hopes to get it in the air for the first test flight before the decade is out, in 2029 — but because its technology has to be built almost entirely from the ground up, the company is already planning it out,” CNN reported last year.
And in November, Hermeus reached a major milestone: Its engine was able to successfully transfer from turbojet to ramjet.
We just completed a major hypersonic milestone – turbojet to ramjet mode transition! pic.twitter.com/1jF7qAZavy
— Hermeus (@hermeuscorp) November 17, 2022
This is critical to flying at hypersonic speeds, which is nearly impossible with a turbojet. Most hypersonic craft use rocket propulsion, instead, which isn’t always viable for a large-scale program.
This is one of the most important technological feats to making operational hypersonic flight a reality.
Most hypersonic platforms use rockets – our approach allows us to use existing infrastructure at traditional airports. pic.twitter.com/FTq6DZmXxI
— Hermeus (@hermeuscorp) November 17, 2022
According to the company’s website, the ramjet is a modified General Electric J85 turbojet engine, a general-purpose military application that powers a number of planes — including, ironically, the Northrop F-5, the Western fighter jet that was called the Russian MiG-28 in the first “Top Gun” movie.
“Over the coming months … Hermeus will modify this engine to be Mach 5 capable, utilizing lessons-learned from its 9-month demonstration engine test campaign last year,” Hermeus said in a March 2021 news release.
No, it’s certainly not this:
WARNING: The following video contains language that some viewers will find offensive.
But is that far in the future? The team at Hermeus says no.
The key is to combine the turbojet and ramjet technologies, both of which already exist. Ramjets only work at supersonic speeds or above; it doesn’t compress the air like a traditional turbojet, because the air literally rams itself into the engine, anyway.
“The turbojet portion and the ramjet portion by themselves are mature technologies that we’ve been using for 50 years. The trick is to put them together, so we designed our own architecture around an off-the-shelf turbojet engine and then built out from there,” said A.J. Piplica, CEO of Hermeus, according to CNN.
So, a Mach 10 jet from Hermeus in the next “Top Gun” movie? It may not be as far-fetched as you might think.
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