“The United States hopes to launch the first aircraft without mobile external control in 2025” | Daily menu

United State She began building the first airplane to demonstrate a new method of flight control that did not use external moving parts. It is expected to fly in 2025.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing company, to build a full-scale X-65 unmanned aircraft to demonstrate the feasibility of using active flow control (AFC) actuators for basic flight control. . The award is the third phase of the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft Using New Effects (CRANE) programme.

In December 1903, The Wright brothers They flew the world's first fully controllable aircraft, which used wing deformation to achieve successful flight. Since then, almost all aircraft have used a system of movable external control surfaces for flight control.

he X-65 This breaks the old design paradigm of flight control by using air jets from a pressurized source to shape the airflow over the aircraft surface, with AFCs on the various surfaces to control the aircraft's roll, pitch and yaw. Eliminating external moving parts is expected to reduce weight and complexity and improve performance.

The X-65 will be built with two sets of control actuators: conventional flaps and rudders, plus AFC effectors integrated into all lifting surfaces. This will reduce risks and increase the program's understanding of the effectiveness of control. Aircraft performance with conventional control surfaces will be the basis; Successive tests will selectively block moving surfaces, using AFC stimuli instead.

The new aircraft, which weighs more than three tons, has a wingspan of 10 metres, and will be able to reach speeds of up to Mach 0.7. Its weight, size and speed, similar to those of a military training aircraft, make the flight test results immediately relevant to real-world aircraft design, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said in a statement.