Superfast US military plane reaches Mach 20 speed, then crashes

An unmanned U.S. military aircraft managed to reach speeds of more than 20 times the speed of sound, and to control itself for three minutes, before it crashed into the Pacific near Vandenberg Air Force Base on August 11. Space.com/MSNBC. Here's an earlier item in the LA Times. Above and below, DARPA images and video depicting the the prototype Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2), described as the fastest aircraft ever built.

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