That was the message when Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a Raytheon Technologies business, spoke to investors about how teams are working across the company to solve the myriad science and engineering problems that come with developing and defending against hypersonics, generally defined as weapons that fly at speeds of Mach 5 or greater.


“We have to go faster. We also have to go farther. We have to be able to detect threats at longer distances. We have to be able to target at longer distances. We have to be able to close kill chains at longer distances,” Kremer said, using the military term for the process of defeating a target. “We have to be able to do that across multiple domains. How we work across domains and how we solve those types of problems is one of the true synergies that we have in this business.”


Here are some of the ways colleagues across Raytheon Technologies, with their deep expertise in areas including heat management, propulsion, missile development and surface- and space-based sensing, are combining novel problem-solving approaches with decades of institutional knowledge to give the U.S. military and allied forces an advantage in the era of hypersonic military operations.

Hypersonic weapons, by definition, are about speed. They fly at a minimum of 3,800 mph, and that’s where the engineering challenges begin.


The biggest one is the heat caused by friction as the air passes over the fast-moving vehicle. Many materials can’t survive that kind of thermal stress. More heat-resistant materials tend to be heavy, very expensive, or both. Using them solves one problem but creates others: A heavier airframe needs more propulsion to reach speed, which requires a more powerful engine and more fuel, which adds weight and increases cost.


Experts at Raytheon Technologies have been working for years to overcome those heat problems, and today they’re applying that knowledge to hypersonics. For example, Raytheon Missiles & Defense is collaborating with Collins Aerospace, another Raytheon Technologies business, to explore the use of advanced materials – such as those that protect engine coverings, brake assemblies and other parts of an aircraft from high temperatures – to help solve the heat-management problems that come with hypersonic flight.


Collins has been working with Raytheon Missiles & Defense on hypersonic solutions since the two became sister businesses under Raytheon Technologies. Now collaborating is not only easier, it’s an imperative under the company’s strategy to use technologies and knowledge from one business to the benefit of another.

Then, of course, there’s the matter of making the airframe go that fast in the first place. The U.S. Department of Defense has stated it wants not only boost-glide hypersonics (which are boosted by rockets into the very upper edge of the atmosphere) but also scramjet-powered hypersonics (which use the fast-moving air around them to provide oxygen for propulsion).


Raytheon Technologies is working with the U.S. military to strengthen its hypersonic strike capability. In September 2022, the U.S. Air Force awarded a $985 million contract to Raytheon Missiles & Defense and Northrop Grumman to develop the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile. That missile, also known as HACM, was initially developed in the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment, or SCIFiRE, a cooperative program with Australia to design and test hypersonic capabilities.


Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman have been partnering since 2013 and signed a teaming agreement in 2019 to develop, produce and integrate Northrop Grumman’s scramjet engines onto Raytheon Technologies' air-breathing hypersonic weapons. That collaboration resulted in the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, which was tested successfully in 2021 and 2022.