By: Dawn Zoldi
Stratolaunch’s Spirit of Mojave has moved hypersonic testing from a PowerPoint ambition into a repeatable, data-rich flight regime. The company’s President and CEO Zack Krevor took the UAS Summit & Expo stage to lay out how the company continues to deliver on last year’s promises of real hypersonic flight.
Progress in Hypersonic Flight Testing
Krevor opened by framing just the historic nature of Stratolaunch’s progress. He noted that the company now operates “the first reusable hypersonic airplane in this country since 1968.” That vehicle, the Talon-A, has already completed four successful flights at hypersonic speeds, executing customer‑defined trajectories and then returning for precision runway landings at Vandenberg Space Force Base on the California coast.
Each mission, tailored for specific offensive and defensive technology demonstrations, leveraged sensors, materials and instrumentation integrated into the Talon-A airframe to experience “the crucible of hypersonic flight,” rather than just wind tunnel proxies. As Krevor joked, the Stratolaunch test vehicle’s once‑clean logo has now been “designed by science,” scorched and scarred by real heat and pressure loads that only operational hypersonic missions can generate.
Spirit of Mojave: A Mobile Hypersonic Test Range
While Talon-A is the hypersonic workhorse, the Spirit of Mojave is the expeditionary backbone that enables Stratolaunch to take that capability wherever defense customers need it. Built from a 747 airframe and now being outfitted under contract with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Stratolaunch designed the Spirit of Mojave carrier aircraft to dramatically expand the geographic reach of hypersonic flight testing.
Krevor highlighted that Stratolaunch is already on contract to go to the Multi-Service Advanced Range complex at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, to open up the first overland hypersonic range in this country since 1968, and then go out into Australia as part of the trilateral AUKUS agreement. Spirit of Mojave will make that possible with global operations capability and an onboard control room that turns the aircraft into a self‑contained flying test range. It allows for full mission planning, execution and data capture without relying solely on traditional ground infrastructure.
Vertically Integrated Hypersonic Platform
Much of Krevor’s talk revolved around vertical integration as a strategic advantage in hypersonic development. Stratolaunch designs, engineers and manufactures its aircraft and hypersonic vehicles at its Mojave Air and Space Port facility, about two hours north of Los Angeles, including all flight software, guidance, navigation and control.
On the carrier side, the company operates two distinct platforms: the giant twin‑fuselage Roc aircraft, with the largest wingspan of any operational aircraft, and the Spirit of Mojave 747 conversion. Roc’s custom center wing section is mated to legacy 747 systems (engines, landing gear and flight deck) to deliver “747 reliability” with the structural capability to airlaunch large hypersonic vehicles. Spirit of Mojave, also 747‑based, is being optimized as a more deployable platform, designed to operate from a variety of locations worldwide while carrying Talon-A under its wing.
Precision Hypersonic Performance and Customer Outcomes
Beyond simply achieving hypersonic speeds, Krevor emphasized that Stratolaunch’s early flight test results have hit narrow performance bands specified by government customers. On the initial series of four Talon-A missions that started in December of last year, the company completed flight operations “within seconds” of planned time‑on‑condition targets, and the vehicle achieved the requested Mach numbers within “one‑hundredth of a Mach number.”
“All four flights performed the hypersonic maneuvers and then came in for a landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base,” he said. Each was not a one‑and‑done demonstration, but rather a showcase for a reusable system that closed the loop on each mission. Those flights, executed in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and other defense sponsors, met all customer objectives and validated both the hypersonic vehicle and the operational concept.
Flight Profiles That Mimic Adversary Systems
Krevor made clear that the Spirit of Mojave and Talon-A system is also designed to replicate the kinds of complex, maneuvering hypersonic threats emerging from peer adversaries. Referencing a recent parade in the People’s Republic of China, he noted that some of the PRC’s hypersonic systems have “a pretty comparable shape” to Stratolaunch’s vehicles. This allows the company to “mimic those maneuvers, make it harder and ensure that our government agencies such as the Space Development Agency are getting a good view of what it’s like to detect and track a hypersonic system.”
By flying representative threat‑like profiles at operationally relevant speeds and altitudes, the platform gives US and allied programs realistic data for tracking, discrimination, and intercept development, which ground tests and simulations alone cannot deliver.
Complex Regulatory Path: Part 450 and Hybrid Ops
The regulatory side of Stratolaunch’s work rivals the novelty of its technology. Because Talon-A is a rocket‑powered vehicle whose engine generates lift into the carrier’s wing system, the integrated operation is treated as an orbital launch vehicle under FAA Part 450 launch licensing, even though it departs horizontally from a runway.
Krevor described Part 450 as “primarily designed for vertical launch,” calling Stratolaunch’s horizontal‑launch architecture an “interesting approach” to fit into that framework. He credited “open communication with the FAA” for enabling novel means of compliance and allowing the company to demonstrate safety using new methodologies while still meeting all quantitative and qualitative safety criteria. When Talon-A is flown in captive‑carry or ferry configurations without rocket ignition, operations also involve experimental airworthiness approaches more familiar to the flight test community.
Autonomy, Energy Management and AI‑Driven Analysis
Underneath the hardware, Stratolaunch has invested heavily in autonomous flight software and post‑flight analytics. The Talon-A is designed for “truly autonomous flight,” Krevor said, with on‑board guidance, navigation and control systems that manage rocket ignition, hypersonic maneuvers and return‑to‑land profiles without real‑time pilot stick‑and‑rudder input.
An energy‑management algorithm, a key capability, adjusts in real time for “conditions of the day,” such as variations in atmospheric density or engine performance. It autonomously reshapes the profile to stay within safety and performance constraints. On some flights, the system has cut the trajectory short to ensure proper heading alignment back into Vandenberg. On others, it has allowed the vehicle to “go long because we have more energy than predicted.”
On the ground, Stratolaunch applies artificial intelligence (AI) to flight and environmental test data to optimize component life and turnaround.mStratolaunch trained its AI agents on both flight data and environmental qualification tests to identify where components experience the harshest environments. These insights let engineers spend less time over‑inspecting benign areas and focus maintenance where the hypersonic regime is “a little more challenging or exhausting,” Krevor noted. He continued, “This is a really great application of artificial intelligence.”
High‑Fidelity Test, High‑Tempo Learning
Krevor repeatedly returned to what he called a philosophy of “high‑quality flight test,” to emphasize that the vehicles are “always talking to us” and that success depends on listening to what the data and hardware are telling the team. Before each flight, Stratolaunch runs a series of “graduation tests” that simulate separation from the carrier, full mission control‑surface activity and complete profile execution in the hardware‑in‑the‑loop environment.
Mission rehearsals blend about one‑third nominal scenarios and two‑thirds off‑nominal cases for both pilots and control‑room crews, and include everything from sensor dropouts to abort commands. Weather has occasionally forced “fizzled” launch days, but Krevor stressed how much Stratolaunch values partners and customers who have been patient through the realities of experimental flight while maintaining pressure to keep learning as fast as possible.
Building a Global Hypersonic Test Ecosystem
Looking ahead, Spirit of Mojave will be the linchpin to a truly global hypersonic test enterprise. With its onboard control room and ability to support captive‑carry and release operations away from traditional ranges, it enables “hypersonic flight testing wherever it’s needed,” including emerging overland corridors and allied test sites.
Stratolaunch’s partnerships span the Department of Defense, Navy Strategic Systems Programs, the Test Resource Management Center, the AFRL and international trilateral efforts. Krevor underscored that these collaborations have “helped enable the success that we’re having as part of this broader team.”
As Spirit of Mojave completes its initial captive‑carry flights and moves into Talon-A release operations, Stratolaunch continues to position itself as a cornerstone provider of reusable, operationally relevant hypersonic test capability for the US and its allies.