Gulfstream and Lockheed Martin plan to fly a quiet, sonic boom-free supersonic technology demonstrator before 2005, and could have a supersonic business jet in production by 2010, according to Gulfstream president and chief operating officer Bill Boisture. If the demonstration is successful, "we would bring an aircraft to the market in the following five years", Boisture said here Monday.

The two companies expect to receive some U.S. Government support for the project via the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's high-tech research office, because the project has military as well as commercial implications.

The project is now being called QSAT, for quiet supersonic aircraft technology. DARPA's QSAT budget this year would be around $20 million, but this would probably increase as work on proceeds on a demonstrator. Boisture said he expects NASA to support the program by continuing its work on propulsion, airframe and environmental issues.

Within two years, says Boisture, Lockheed Martin and Gulfstream will select a size and shape for the demonstrator, which could range from a near-fullscale prototype to a smaller unmanned air vehicle.

Supersonic business jet studies are being pushed by a formidable triad of interests. Gulfstream -- now owned by General Dynamics, which has become Wall Street's favorite aerospace and defense prime contractor -- sees it as a potential follow-on to its current airplanes. Lockheed Martin is looking for supersonic-cruise technology that could be applied to future military and civil aircraft. The two companies are being strongly encouraged by Warren Buffett, owner of Executive Jet and the NetJets franchise, who has helped Lockheed Martin lobby for government seed money.
"We have knocked down the barrier of distance for our customers with the Gulfstream V," Boisture said. "The next barrier is time. We've been encouraged by our early research with reference to boom suppression. This aircraft must be capable of flying randomly overland at supersonic speed."

Other companies, added Boisture, "have been discouraged because there is not a quick pay-off, but we're in this for the long haul. If someone's going to do it, this is the team."

On the government side, NASA administrator Dan Goldin has been a consistent supporter of supersonic transport research. The termination of NASA's High Speed Research (HSR) program, which was developing technology for a 300-seat supersonic airliner, was not the agency's choice, but NASA had no alternative when Boeing pulled out of the project.

Goldin has not been able to establish a NASA program with Lockheed Martin and Gulfstream, but may have helped win support for a DARPA program, with potential civil and military applications. Goldin has also supported the idea of rolling some of the HSR program's engine research into a more broadly based project aimed at advanced commercial engine technology.

Suppressing the sonic boom is critical to the concept, because it increases the airplane's average speed on most city pairs and avoids the need to compromise the design for subsonic cruise. At the Paris air show in June, J.A. "Micky" Blackwell, head of Lockheed Martin's aeronautics group, said that the company's renowned Skunk Works had made advances in technology which would reduce the peak overpressure caused by a supersonic aircraft to the point where there would be no discernible boom on the ground.

"Low-boom" supersonic designs have been the subject of many theoretical and design studies since the 1970s, most of them focusing on such methods as tailoring the airplane's cross-section and carefully balancing its size, weight, speed and cruising altitude. A new advanced design group within the Skunk Works, headed by veteran designer Ed Glasgow, may be conducting wind-tunnel tests of the new low-boom designs within a few months. It is unlikely that the design will resemble the twin-engine model that Gulfstream and Lockheed unveiled in 1998, but -- for the moment--details are being concealed as only the Skunks know how to do.

Dassault's supersonic studies were suspended last year when the company determined that the fighter engines that it used as its study baseline would have to be heavily redesigned for transport use. Gulfstream and Lockheed Martin are talking to all three principal U.S.-based engine manufacturers -- P&W, GE and Rolls-Royce Allison -- about propulsion for the supersonic aircraft.