X-planeDARPA has signed an agreement with Aurora Flight Sciences to build a working prototype of the X-plane aircraft.
After more than five years of testing models in a wind tunnel, engineers are ready to create the first full-fledged working copy. The problem is that no one understands how it should look and work – it's still an area of experimentation.
It should be clarified right away that "X-plane" is a platform for testing various engineering solutions in the field of "air flow control" technology. This is the purpose of the CRANE project: to replace the flaps, ailerons and other mechanical systems of aircraft with nozzles, from which a stream of air is emitted at the right moments. Now airplanes maneuver in the air by small changes in their aerodynamic shape with the help of mechanical devices, but this should remain in the past.
X-plane There are a lot of advantages of the novelty and everything lies in the military plane.
Devices created using the new technology will have fewer parts that are difficult to repair, larger hull contours and the ability to take more fuel, will be less noticeable to radars, they will have higher lift, etc. Alas, all this does not work well even on small models due to the complexity of the technology itself. The US military understands this perfectly well and therefore insists on creating a full-size model, after testing which it will be possible to make a final decision on the fate of the project.
X-planeAlexander Martynenko