Research on High-Speed Transport Program and Present Status at NAL, Tokyo

NAL's research program for high-speed civil transport (HSCT) is introduced, in relation to a government report 1) titled “National Long-term Research and Development Plan for Aeronautical Technology”.

A guideline and a program 2) were proposed by a research committee which was specially organized in the Science and Technology Agency, so as to plan technology verification flight experiments with small high-speed experimental aircraft. Parallel to and in accordance with discussions by the committee, NAL established the concept of flight experiment and placed orders with aircraft manufacturers for three conceptual designs of unmanned supersonic experimental aircraft. The results of conceptual design studies are reported here.