[Gravityloss]

Ramjets were developed right after the second world war and Mach 4+ was reached in the fifites. It's complicated but not extremely. See Antonio Ferri or Lockheed X-7.

It turned out out solid fuel rockets are operationally more practical for the use cases like air defence, long range missiles that are ballistic instead of cruising in the atmosphere and so on. And jet engines are more efficient for subsonic cruise missiles. Ramjets are still used in some missiles like the long range mach 3 air-to-air Meteor.

[pfdietz]

There have been air-to-air missiles using rocket-ramjet combinations: they start as a rocket, then once up to speed an inlet opens and they transition to ramjet mode (using the same chamber and nozzle). It extends range. Ramjets are best for maintaining speed rather than accelerating to speed.

EDIT: I see this was referenced above (Meteor).

[flohofwoe]

> Ramjets were developed right after the second world war

Development already started during WW2 as one of many German last-ditch experiments, for instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronach_Lorin

...it never went into an actually flying airplane though (apparently there were test flights with Lorin tubes attached to propeller planes, but only to test the Lorin tube behaviour under flight conditions, not as an engine replacement).

The idea and patent itself is over a century old by now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Lorin

[SEJeff]

This is why Ukraine is so excited to get up to 150 Gripens (with Meteor loadout) from the Swedes.