新兴航天简报：高超音速飞行技术（英）2026

Institutional Research Group Ali JavaheriSenior Research Analyst,Emerging Spaces PitchBook is a Morningstar company providing the most comprehensive, mostaccurate, and hard-to-find data for professionals doing business in the private markets. Overview Hypersonics is no longer just a science project. It is becoming an industrializationmarket, pushed by geopolitical competition, procurement reform, and anadvanced-munitions base that is already capacity constrained. Full missile integrationwill probably remain dominated by primes and government programs. For ventureinvestors, the more compelling opportunity is in the enabling supplier base:propulsion, thermal protection, high-temperature materials, testing, manufacturing,and guidance. Public budget signals point to a visible US opportunity in the midteens Background Hypersonics startups build vehicles and propulsion systems that operate above Mach5, or five times the speed of sound, as well as the technologies that enable them.Geopolitical competition, US procurement reform, and industrial-base depletion have Hypersonic technology is not new. The US demonstrated hypersonic flight more thansix decades ago through the X-15 program, which ran from 1959 to 1968 and reachedspeeds above Mach 6.1But for most of the period that followed, hypersonics remained For access to more of this dataand PitchBook’s Emerging Spacestool, request a free trialhere. That began to change as China and Russia developed hypersonic andhypersonic-adjacent weapons. China’s DF-ZF glide vehicle and reported 2021fractional orbital glide test raised concerns that US missile-warning and air-defensearchitectures could be stressed by maneuverable systems flying nontraditionaltrajectories at high speed.2Russia’s Avangard glide vehicle and Kinzhal, Tsirkon, and US demand is now formalizing around programs of record, including Dark Eagle,Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS), Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), the GlidePhase Interceptor, and remaining Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW)procurement activity. These programs are still prime led, but they create pull-throughdemand for propulsion, thermal protection, materials, testing, manufacturing, Technologies and processes Hypersonics is more of a stack than a single category; its three layers range fromoffensive vehicles through manufacturing, and each has its own market dynamics.The US Department of Defense (DOD) has shifted its framing from hypersonic Testing is one of the biggest bottlenecks in hypersonics. Ground facilities (includingwind tunnels, shock tunnels, arc jets, propulsion stands, materials testing, andhardware-in-the-loop simulation) recreate pieces of the flight environment but cannotfully substitute for flight. Real flights are scarce and expensive. Reusable, lower-costcommercial test beds are increasing the cadence of real-world testing, as seen withKratos’ MACH-TB 2.0, the Defense Innovation Unit’s High-Cadence Airborne Testing Defense is a sensing, tracking, and interception problem. Hypersonic vehicles flyquickly, maneuver, and travel through atmospheric regions that complicate legacymissile-warning systems. Space-based sensing is therefore central. The SpaceDevelopment Agency’s Tranche 3 Tracking Layer awards, totaling about $3.5 billionfor 72 satellites, expand missile warning, tracking, and fire-control-quality sensing Manufacturing capacity decides the offensive side. Additive manufacturing, directedenergy deposition, binder jetting, automated composites, thermoplastic propellants,precision machining, nondestructive inspection, and digital manufacturing twins Propulsion sits at the center of the supplier-stack thesis, but the integration is asimportant as the technology. Jet engine and high-performance SRM production linesare operating at or near full utilization, with limited near-term capacity additions,meaning new entrants face component-access constraints before they face technicalones. Propulsion is also tightly coupled with airframe design, which raises switching The missile is not the market. Strategic boost-glide systems will stay primecontrolled, but propulsion, test infrastructure, reusable vehicles, manufacturing,digital engineering, and defensive sensing create plausible entry points for startups. Applications Five applications are driving demand for hypersonics. Four are defense oriented andrelevant to the near-term market. The fifth, commercial high-speed transport, should Offensive strike is the clearest and highest-dollar-density application. Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon/Dark Eagle, CPS, HACM, ARRW procurement, andCastelion’s Blackbeard reflect the core military use case: reaching defended ortime-sensitive targets at high speed while creating a harder interception problemthan traditional ballistic or cruise missiles. The real value comes from how speedpairs with maneuverability, range, and survivability, especially in contested operating The second application is high-speed intelli