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Mayhem: The highly secretive US Air Force effort to field a hypersonic stealth drone could finally bring the SR-72 to fruition
Hidden within the long list of hypersonic weapon programs drawing funds from Pentagon coffers, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Mayhem Program appears to be developing a dual-cycle scramjet propulsion system for more than just missiles. The effort was originally tasked with fielding larger scramjet systems capable of propelling larger payloads further distances than unspecific “existing systems.”

Although Mayhem is regularly referred to as a missile program, a closer look at the branch’s issued Requests for Information (ROIs) suggests Mayhem is more likely aimed at fielding an uncrewed, reusable hypersonic drone platform capable of conducting two different specified mission sets: strike operations and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR, missions.

As Joseph Trevithick over at The War Zone noted late last year, Mayhem’s formal name recently changed from “Expendable Hypersonic Multi-Mission Air-Breathing Demonstrator” to “Hypersonic Multi-mission ISR and Strike,” and the effort has also been referenced as a “Multi-Mission Cruiser.” This strongly suggests that we’re not talking about a missile you fire at a target and forget about. The removal of the word “expendable” in conjunction with the “multi-mission” moniker both suggest Mayhem aims to field a reusable, autonomous platform that leverages what will likely be the world’s first dual-mode or turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) hypersonic propulsion systems.
In other words, Mayhem aims to field a turbine-based scramjet system that can function at all airspeeds from subsonic to supersonic and then hypersonic. Today’s ramjet and scramjet systems don’t function reliably until they’re moving at extremely high speeds, which are currently achieved using rockets that fire before the propulsion systems come online.

This concept is tantalizingly similar to the longstanding discussion about Lockheed Martin’s planned successor to the Mach 3.5-capable SR-71 Blackbird, known as the SR-72. All the way back in 2018, Lockheed Vice President Jack O’Banion seemed to indicate that an SR-72 demonstrator may have already flown, and he stated clearly that a full-sized propulsion system had already been built and tested. “The aircraft is also agile at hypersonic speeds,” O’Banion told a crowd at the 2018 SciTech Forum, “with reliable engine starts.”

A hypersonic strike and ISR platform would have far-reaching strategic ramifications: from the ability to deliver less-expensive non-hypersonic ordnance to targets at speeds above Mach 5 to rapid intelligence gathering even in places where satellite coverage is compromised. While the world worries about who is fielding new hypersonic missiles, it seems the Air Force is secretly planning to win the hypersonic aircraft race before the rest of the world even knows it’s begun.