The goal for Blackswift is to be able to take off from a conventional runway, hit Mach 6 and possibly leave the atmosphere, accomplish its mission, then come back down and land on its own. It's also part of DARPA's Prompt Global Strike initiative ("If your missile isn't there in 60 minutes or less, it's free!"). The Blackswift propulsion system is a hybrid that mixes a fairly conventional turbojet for low-altitude, low speed flight with a ram/scramjet for hypersonic speeds. Above Mach 4, the ramjet takes over, slamming air through the jet at supersonic speeds without the use of a compressor or fan blade.

If everything goes well, Blackswift could provide a basic platform for the development of further military space vehicles. Which is simultaneously really neat and pretty terrifying. Image by: Wired.

Boeing Joins Lockheed on Blackswift. [Military.com]
Blackswift Swoops in for $750 million. [Wired]

Says Nader Elhefnawy:

[James] started with thinly-sketched claims about Soviet capabilities and programs for which the evidence was slim, and then extrapolated from them in a frictionless universe where unproven technologies never disappoint and bureaucratic irrationality never gets in the way.

In other words, by focusing on the absolute worst case, James helped make the Cold War that much more frenzied. It's an important lesson for the next time futurists make teeth-grinding predictions about Chinese space mastery or super-terrorists. But is anyone willing to learn it?

Space War and Future Hype [Plausible Futures]