The company with the world’s largest aircraft now has a hypersonic rocket plane
Stratolaunch's Talon-A2 reusable hypersonic rocket plane has already carried multiple experiments and delivered payloads. The company is aiming for monthly flights by the end of the year and eventually wants to ramp up to weekly flights. The Pentagon has spent about $12 billion on hypersonic weapons development and testing since 2018 - none of the weapons are operational yet. China's first hypersonic weapon became operational in 2019, and Russia's government claimed it deployed a hypersonic weapon in the same year. The Pentagon's hunger for hypersonic weapons will likely fund Stratolaunch for some time to come.