Boeing, DARPA revolutionizing the future of stealth aircraft...CRANE program’s X-65 prototype aims to break the mold of how aircraft fly with new active flow control technology

Asia Times ^ | JANUARY 10, 2024 | By GABRIEL HONRADA

[Alas Babylon!]

I watched Alabama buzzards (Turkey and Black Vultures) using just a few feathers to turn around and go up and down in the air. Amazing creatures!

[Red Badger]

I know I won’t live to see it, but one day these pics will be as quaint looking to people as pics of the Wright Flyer are to us.........................

[Semper Vigilantis]

If I remember correctly in the late 60s ‘North Cape’ by Joe Poyer had a spy plane that had many futuristic features (including an ejection pod like the F-111 ended up with) and flight surfaces that conformed as needed in flight. It was also controlled by thought (think Firefox movie) and the pilot was jacked up on amphetamines when needed and brought down to normal or put to sleep by barbiturates as the computer deemed necessary per the flight profile.

[Paal Gulli]

Aviation has been using engine exhaust released across a wing to increase the energy in the airflow for more than half a century. The "blown flaps" concept goes back to the F-104 Starfighter and F-4 Phantom II.

I don't recall having seen DARPA involved in anything like this since the Sikorsky S-72 "X-Wing" project, which was an experiment to see if they could make rotor blades on a (hybrid) helicopter with no moving control surfaces, then vary the lift produced by the rotors by selectively and cyclically injecting compressed air into the airflow around the rotors.

The thing about the X-Wing's rotor is that once they were in high-speed forward flight, they were to be 'locked' in a cruciate "X-shape" and function like a conventional wing. so it potentially could have been much faster than any helicopter.

The narrator in this video talks way too fast (and indistinctly) and is an aviation idiot but the images in the video are priceless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IDu97ij3mo

It had stub wings for extra lift, and it did demonstrate the ability to fly with nothing but the sub wings. And the rotor head was always intended to include explosive bolts so if things went pear-shaped they always could jettison the rotor head and fly like an airplane to look for a runway.

This is a cross-section of one of the rotors, showing how they proposed to duct high-pressure air out of the leading edges of the rotors to change their lift characteristics, exactly the same as what this new project is proposing:

The hot air was to be delivered through a series of channels in the rotor mast with delivery to the individual rotor blades controlled by computers. In the short time they were working on it, they couldn't get the system to make a pronounced-enough difference in the amount of lift generated. Critically, they could never get it to create enough lift to make hovering possible, which is kinda sorta a deal-breaker in a helicopter.

So this is really a new application of a very old technology. I'd heard at one time "they" were experimenting with "wing-warping" for stealth a/c, a throwback to the method used by the Wright brothers before the advent of ailerons, because wing-warping could eliminate a seam in the skin of the plane. Ducted jets might not have seams but it seems to me (no pun intended) you've still got to have flaws in the skin for the ducted air to emerge from. But, hey, them DARPA dudes is smarter than I could ever hope to be.

[38special]

Boeing stock went On Sale this week

[Red Badger]

That helicopter must be a mechanical nightmare!....................

[Bookshelf]

Apparently, neither of you two geniuses is aware of the Skunk Works. Look it up.

[Delta 21]

Boeing and DARPA working on a plane together. What could go wrong?

[Red Badger]

It will be over priced, will want 2 paid holidays per month and the doors will fall off.................