DARPA Oblique Flying-Wing (OFW) Project
The United States Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Northrop Grumman a $10.3 million (USD) contract for risk reduction and preliminary planning for an X-plane OFW demonstrator., known as the Switchblade.
The program aims at producing a technology demonstrator aircraft to explore the various challenges which the radical design entails. The proposed aircraft would be a pure flying wing (an aircraft with no other auxiliary surfaces such as tails, canards or a fuselage) where the wing is swept with one side of the aircraft forward, and one backwards in an asymmetric fashion. This aircraft configuration is believed to give it a combination of high speed, long range and long endurance. The program entails two phases. Phase I will explore the theory and result in a conceptual design, while Phase II will result in the design, manufacture and flight test of an aircraft. The outcome of the program will result in a dataset that can then be used when considering future military aircraft designs.
Wind tunnel tests for the aircraft design has been completed. The design was noted to be "workable and robust."
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