THE TOP 10 FASTEST PLANES 01 Falcon HTV-2 Top speed: 20,920km/h unmanned Lockheed Martin, defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and US Air Force, usa, 2010 developed to test the limits of long-duration hypersonic travel, the Falcon HTV-2 is a rocket-launched, unmanned but fully manoeuvrable plane that’s capable of flying at Mach 20. Not that anything can be remotely described as ‘long-duration’ at these kinds of speed; a plane travelling at more than 20,000 miles an hour would cover the distance between New York City and Los Angeles in around 12 minutes. 02 X-43A Top speed: 12,144km/h unmanned NASA, USA, 2004 03 X-15 Top speed: 7,274km/h Manned us air Force and NASA, USA, 1959 04 X-51 WaveRider Top speed: 6,276km/h unmanned Boeing, USA, 2010 05 SR-71 BlackBird Top speed: 3,540km/h Manned Lockheed, USA, 1964 06 MiG-25 Foxbat Top speed: 3,492km/h Manned Mikoyangurevich, soviet Union, 1964 07 Bell X-2 starbuster Top sp...