There are no flaps on this plane. Those are not flaps that you see there.
No flaps eh?
Then what are those flappy looking things on the back of the wings?
There are no flaps on this plane. Those are not flaps that you see there.
Technically, they are called ailerons. See how they are offset, on the right up and on the left down.. to cause a roll. There is no rudder (vertical stabilizer), tailplane (horizontal stabilizer) or "flaps" which are extended to increase lift on take-off and landing.
I think that the aircraft most definitely has some control surfaces that are deflected in a conventional manner. But it also has a few that do not deflect but are hooked up to tubes for blowing.
The aircraft seems to just be a technology test-bed where conventional control surfaces can be swapped out for the forced-air kind.
I wouldn't be surprised if these actually functioned as "flaperons" the inner surfaces acting more like flaps on take-off and landing and still being available for in-flight attitude correction. I believe they are far more important than the writer implies because they are likely are extremely important to making it possible for the thing to fly.
However, On the leading edge you can almost see holes so they could be controlling the flow of air across this as some older low speed takeoff and landing craft did in the past. The white section is most probably fixed and has air piped to it as well, you can see the holes on the trailing edge in this section and the air hoses.
These probably give two different sets of holes airflow based on wanting to bias the wing to lift or descend. This is probably what they are going on about. In at speed stable flying, the "flaperons" just act like wing surface and control is provided by altering the ducting of air to these surfaces.
Hey, who you gonna believe, Them or your lyin' eyes?