Two leading US aerospace companies, GE Aerospace and Lockheed Martin, are joining forces to create a rotating detonation ramjet engine (RDDJ).

Despite a number of advantages of RDDJs—for example, the absence of moving parts, it is necessary to develop a speed of up to Mach 3 to launch it, which requires a powerful rocket accelerator, reports Tekhkult.

GE Aerospace and Lockheed Martin propose to solve this problem with the help of a rotary detonation engine, which uses the supersonic wave of detonating fuel. As a result, a self-sustaining cycle is formed that maintains pressure during the combustion of the fuel mixture.

The efficiency of such an engine is 25% higher than usual, which enables it to be made lighter and more compact.

The RDDJ can operate at subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic speeds with an afterburner.

Lockheed Martin has already developed a high-speed tactical air intake for the dual-mode vertical flow RDDJ. The engine can operate at various altitudes, but its implementation requires complex hydrodynamic computational models to manage complex shock waves.