🔷 Blended Wing

JetZero

Last year, the Air Force awarded a relatively large $235m contract to a relatively unknown startup, JetZero, to build a blended wing body (BWB) prototype aircraft.

What

As the picture above shows, BWBs ditch the flying tube-with-wings design for...wait for it…one with a body and wing blended together.

The concept originated in the 1980s and promises less drag (no tail) and more lift lifting body), translating to significantly more efficiency (i.e., range per weight).

So What

JetZero is going after the midmarket airliner segment but has ambitions for militarized tanker and dual-use transport variations. This is why the Air Force is interested and one of the reasons why they are partnered with Northrop Grumman.

Besides being a military prime and experts in large aircraft design and development, NG also owns Scaled Composites, the subsidiary that will build the BWB full-scale demonstrator to fly in 2027. This thing is going to be YUGE. ⬇️  

Commercial aviation giants Airbus and Boeing have both experimented with BWB concepts, but the big deal is that no one has ever built—let alone flown—a full-scale BWB demonstrator.

JetZero and Northrop are aiming to change that and have a significant contract from the Air Force to do so. That said, JetZero is starting small, too. Earlier this year, the FAA cleared their subscale BWB to fly, and presumably, it's flying now (but strangely, it has no press).   

What Now

The timing of this is impeccable. The Air Force’s tanker and transport fleet is rapidly aging out, and two massive programs are on the horizon to address it: Next Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS) and the Next Generation Airlift (NGAL). As the names imply, they are interested in something next gen: beyond a tube-with-wings flown by humans.

If JetZero and Northrop can keep to the break-neck pace they are promising (transport variant by 2030), the Air Force could scrap its KC-135 replacement “bridge tanker” program.

Wild Times

Despite JetZero’s presumably massive headstart and partnership, expect stiff competition and more concept reveals to assess the temperature of the water.

Lockheed Martin has a stealth tanker concept, though stealth will depend on what it’s refueling (which is now up in the air), and last week, Boeing teased a larger MQ-25 drone tanker that is land-based and could carry 40% more fuel than the Navy’s carrier-variant.

We’re sure the primes have a few more concepts up their sleeves, but one thing is for sure: The next few years will be wild for BWBs, tankers, and air mobility!

— Caleb B

In That Number

up to 18 Months

It will take up to 18 months to deliver all the F-35s that went into warm storage off the production line due to upgrade delays

TRIVIA

Boeing built a BWB X-plane called the X-48B, which flew back in 2007. The conceptual design had a wingspan of 240 feet, but what was the actual wingspan of the X-48B?

A) 20 feet
B) 40 feet
C) 60 feet
D) 80 feet
E) 100 feet

On the Radar

The B-21 bomber flight test is picking up. There are 3 aircraft in testing—one in the flight test and 2 in structure testing. Even so, the one-flying bomber is now flying up to twice a week. The Air Force also released the first official video of the B-21 flying.

• The Merge’s Take: The pace of flight ops is reassuring, though the pace of public affairs is not. This official video was released almost a year after its first flight—and unofficial videos of that event hit the internet within 5 minutes of it happening.

Air Force CCAs will have tails. Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) being developed won’t use flying-wing designs (ala RQ-170) and instead will go after less stealthy, more affordable designs.

• The Merge’s Take: The head of Skunk Works took that one step further, saying that there is likely a trend from survivability to affordability…to even expendability. This shift is also showing up in wargames, where operators are accepting risks to win engagements by putting CCAs situations a manned platform would forego—changing the risk calculus. Those CCAs, originally envisioned as a 1:4 MUM-T ratio, might extend to ratios well beyond that.

NGAD is in limbo. What started as a trial balloon has turned into a bottom-up review of what the Air Force’s 6th-gen fighter is supposed to do, how much it should cost, and presumably how many should be produced. The service floated a new trial balloon about cost—alluding it should cost less than an F-35 (a 69% cost target reduction per jet).

• The Merge’s Take: Industry was quick to pop that balloon, saying it’s not going to happen. Cost sets quantity, but in the exquisite tech sector, cost also sets capability. The NGAD turmoil essentially has a trickle-down effect on a number of other aircraft requirements, like the service’s next-gen tanker (NGAS) and CCA Increment 2.  

$1B kamikaze drone award on pause. AeroVironment’s $990m Switchblade loitering munitions contract with the Army is on pause following a protest filed by Mistral, a company awarded a $73m SOCOM contract for its GOLAM II loitering munitions a few months ago.

• The Merge’s Take: Mistral’s SOCOM deal is a re-seller contract for Hero-120SF loitering munitions, which are made by Israel’s UVision, so this looks like a Hero-120 vs Switchblade 600 showdown.

They Said It
“You can think of some of these airplanes being match sticks; you can think of some of them being Zippo lighters that you refill and use all the time. We tried to make this be the Bic lighter — the thing that you’re going to depend on, that you are going to take on your camping trip that’s going to work.”

— Mike Atwood, VP of advanced programs for General Atomics, on the CCA drone they are building for the Air Force

Knowledge Bombs

• Anduril & General Atomics showcased their CCA drone mockups

• Reliable Robotics won a $3.6m Air Force TACFI award to continue flight testing its certifiable autonomous flight tech

• Pratt & Whitey’s new software aims to extend the life and enhance performance of F-22 engines

• Boeing is going to connect the E-7 to satellite sensor constellations to demo a fused air-space picture

• The UK E-7 Wedgetail completed its first test flight

• Georgia Tech (GTRI) won a $85m Navy contract to prototype heterogeneous autonomous teaming

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ANSWER
The X-48B featured a wingspan of 20 feet, an 8.5% scale of the conceptual design. Without a frame of reference, it’s really tough to tell, though (the cockpit stickers don’t help either). Here’s what it looks like.