I've been talking about hypersonic weapons for years now, but I've never received more questions about them than I have these past few weeks.
It took me a while to figure out why, but eventually someone told me that Tom Cruise takes a joyride in the opening scene of this summer's blockbuster movie Top Gun: Maverick.
I'm not a movie-goer myself, but I did watch the scene and I will concede that it is, in fact, cool.
Dubbed "Darkstar," the Top Gun plane is sleek and menacing, and truly not far off from what actual hypersonic planes look like.
So it's not surprising that the film's producers got a lot of help from none other than Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) in designing it.
Lockheed Martin has developed and flown more hypersonic vehicles than any other U.S. company. It has decades of development and flight test experience from government contracts and it outpaces its competitors in research and development.
In fact, Lockheed developed America's first hypersonic plane, the SR-71 Blackbird in 1976. Capable of reaching speeds exceeding Mach 3, the cutting-edge spy plane could fly from New York to London in less than two hours and outpace any enemy missiles that might be fired its way.
Even today, it's still the second-fastest manned plane in history.
Of course, it could be bumped to third place by the SR-72, which Lockheed Martin has been developing in secret.
The SR-72 will be twice as fast, operating at a speed of Mach 6. It incorporates lessons learned from Lockheed's Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2), an experimental aircraft that flew at Mach 20, or 13,000 mph, after being launched from a rocket.
At those speeds, the aircraft could travel from New York to Los Angeles in under 15 minutes.
It's this plane that formed the inspiration for Darkstar.