RIP: Northrop Grumman's Oblique Flying Wing

DARPA has confirmed that Northrop Grumman’s Oblique Flying Wing project will not proceed to an X-plane flight demonstrator but will rather be cancelled.



The OFW was a tailless variable-geometry flying wing designed to combine long subsonic loiter endurance with high supersonic dash speed. It was an unusual design and some referred to it as the "Switchblade".


ATS Threads on Northrop Grumman's Oblique Flying Wing:

Aircraft Projects » Northrop to build Switchblade

Aircraft Projects » Oblique wings are comming

Aircraft Projects » Northrops reveals OFW concept

Aircraft Projects » Oblique Flying Wing: UAV Demonstrator to fly around 2010

This can only mean one thing: the prototype showed huge promise and the project is now officially "black".

Originally posted by HatTrick
This can only mean one thing: the prototype showed huge promise and the project is now officially "black".

Or the aerodynamic problems are practically insurmountable and the concept was deemed crap.



I would be more of the opinion this was indeed what happened.


Constructing the control laws for such a machine would be nightmarish for little tangible gain over variable geometry wings.

Originally posted by kilcoo316

Or the aerodynamic problems are practically insurmountable and the concept was deemed crap.

I was told that bringing the supersonic concept to reality as presented by NG was difficult and costly in the same vein as making a STOVL hypersonic vehicle; In other words it could be done... eventually, and be waay over budget and extremely underwhelming in it's performance.

All that can easily be interpreted into your assessment - it's crap!

Originally posted by intelgurl
making a STOVL hypersonic vehicle

Bill Gunston needs to get on the horn to policy-makers immediately.

Maybe we can keep everyone here employed for a decade or two if we all write our congressmen...

Originally posted by HatTrick
This can only mean one thing: the prototype showed huge promise and the project is now officially "black".

Hmmm...sounds like we already have the follow on with ATSD............go reread the article.
Sometime s things are right under our noses

reply to post by intelgurl



Northrop was very successful with phase one and is soliciting funds for Phase two.


So it's not RIP just yet.