What are advantages of Forward Swept Wings?

The F-22 is actually almost as manuverable due to the variable exhaust, and the fact that it too is inherintly unstable, like the X-29 was. The costs factor with the forward swept wing is that as of now there aren't any fighters made out of all or mostly composite materials, like a forward swept wing design would have to be, so that the wings wouldn't twist themselves apart. They would have to buy/build all kinds of new equipment to work with the materials, and fine out what kinds of stresses they could take during manufacturing, etc. That was the biggest cost of the SR-71 program. Until they built the Blackbirds, they had never built a plane out of titanium, only small portions of them. When they were building them, they were learning about how to work with titanium at the same time. They found out little things like the grease pencils they used would eat into the metal, so they had to find other things to write on it with. You would have the same thing here with the forward swept wing planes.

But I honestly think that the BIGGEST reason we don't have any flying right now is that they're different. It's the same thing Northrop ran into with the XB-49. We could have had a stealthy flying wing design flying but because it didn't LOOK like a "normal" airplane it ran into problems getting pushed through.

Wow i guess it is just some people and they don't like anything new anymore. its sad really cause lots of really kool planes are on paper but no one is willing to risk the little bit of money that is in the industry it "seems" right now.

New and Different are Bad Things. Most people have this built into them on some degree or another, but when it happens in the military we can lose projects that may advance things rapidly, and will get built later on when they realize just how good they really are.

I read a Nasa paper about the X29. They say that the biggest advantage of FSW is that it increases the stability and manureability when crossing the sound barrier. However the improvment was only of 15% and that it was not enough to compensate for all the problems it has. For more info check out the Dryden Base page at Nasa's website.

There were actually several things tried with the X-29. The biggest advantage was that they had control of the plane at higher AOAs than "normal" airplanes.

Research results showed that the configuration of forward swept wings, coupled with movable canards, gave pilots excellent control response at up to 45 degrees angle of attack. During its flight history, the X-29's were flown on 422 research missions 242 by aircraft No. 1 in the Phase 1 portion of the program; 120 flights by aircraft No. 2 in Phase 2; and 60 flights in a follow-on "vortex control" phase. An additional 12 non-research flights with X29 No. 1 and 2 non-research flights with X-29 No. 2 raised the total number of flights with the two aircraft to 436.

www.globalsecurity.org...