A new fuel for jets and missiles is on the cards

THE LATEST buzzword in the world’s aerospace skunk works is “hypersonic”. Speed and surprise have always been essential to warfare, and what better way to wrong-foot an enemy than by arriving unexpectedly on his doorstep in the form of an aircraft or missile travelling at Mach 5?In that context, a notice posted at the beginning of the year by America’s navy, soliciting proposals for a new research project, is intriguing. The project’s objective is to “determine a form of boron or a boron-based chemical pathway that leads to implementation of boron in energetic compounds, especially fuels (solid and liquid)”. The navy’s engineers, it seems, are trying to revive an idea that might make hypersonic flight easier to achieve, but which was tested and then abandoned more than half a century ago. They hope to spice up aviation and rocket fuel with a long-neglected element.