LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS,
Air Force, NASA and Boeing to test new plane concept that could offer greater range and better fuel economy for missions
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE: A futuristic, tailless aircraft design that could be used for military tankers and transport aircraft will be flight-tested later this year at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.
The X-48B, a joint NASA, Air Force and Boeing research project, is testing a design concept called the “blended wing body” that researchers believe provides more lift, offering greater range and as much as 30 percent greater fuel economy.
“We believe the BWB concept has the potential to cost-effectively fill many roles required by the Air Force, such as tanking, weapons carriage and command and control,” said Capt. Scott Bjorge, the Air Force Research Laboratory's X-48B program manager.
“This research is a great cooperative effort, and a major step in the development of the BWB.”
Unlike the traditional “tube and wing” design in which wings are attached to a fuselage, the blended-wing body merges the fuselage with the wing — producing something like a cross between a conventional aircraft and a flying wing such as the B-2 stealth bomber.
The program will test two remotely-controlled X-48B aircraft, each with three jet engines and a wingspan of 21 feet. That is about one-twelfth the size of an operational blended-wing body aircraft.
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