Atherton is a Vice President and Senior Technology Executive within the Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs (ADP) organization, also known as 'The Skunk Works'. He previously led the Technology Roadmaps organization, with responsibility and strategic oversight of the ADP technology portfolio while serving as the organization's CTO.
March test ‘one of the biggest steps we've seen’ in development of new hypersonic weapons, company officials say.
There are a few sets of hard problems around hypersonics, around: What do you do with all the heat? How do you control yourself at very high speeds… control communications through plasma layers? All of those physics things that you can read about, to some extent, those are common across various regimes in hypersonics. Everything that we learn and apply can be reapplied and adapted in other spaces. The progress we've seen here, just in this recent chapter, is one of the biggest steps we've seen in making true on that dream of a practical realization of hypersonics.