: Mark Lewis, former Air Force chief scientist who appeared at the hypersonics seminar with Hallion June 30 (see Hypersonic Breakthrough Coming Soon above), agreed with Hallion’s timeline for the fielding of a hypersonic missile. Lewis said hypersonic missiles—or aircraft, for that matter—would be well-suited to theater operations of less than 700 miles, but “don’t make much sense” for globe-spanning missions. The effective range limitation is a by-product of the fact that hypersonic weapons would likely consume vast quantities of fuel at such high speed.
As with previous stealth aircraft unveilings, the Air Force’s imagery of the F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter has been doctored to keep adversaries guessing about its true shaping and design philosophy.