Americans are building an unusual plane. It will be controlled by air streams

"The X-65 CRANE unmanned aircraft, with diamond-shaped wings, is scheduled to make its first flight in the summer of 2025. It could mean one of the greatest revolutions in the history of aviation.

The X-65 is an experimental jet being developed as part of the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program overseen by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Pentagon's research and development agency. At DARPA's request, the machine is created by Aurora Flight Sciences. 

Since the invention of the first airplanes, they have been controlled by moving surfaces such as rudders, flaps, elevators, and ailerons. The new plane is to be controlled in a new way, without the use of external moving parts.

Goodbye to flaps and ailerons

How? Through jets of compressed air that change the way surrounding air flows over the aircraft during flight. However, to minimize risk, the first X-65 demonstrator will be equipped with both conventional moving control surfaces and so-called active flow control (AFC) actuators, i.e. compressed air jets.

Americans are working on new generation vertical take-off (VTOL) aircraft. The competition for such a project was announced by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a government agency dealing with the development of military technologies.

“We will have sensors to monitor how AFC performance compares to traditional control mechanisms, and this data will help us better understand how the new solution could revolutionize both military and commercial units in the future,” says Richard Wlezien, CRANE program manager , cited in the DARPA statement.

Starting point for new planes

The X-65 will have a wingspan of 9 meters and weigh 3,200 kg, making it about the size of the T-3 trainer plane used by NASA astronauts and the US military. It will be capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 0.7, which DARPA says will make "flight test results immediately relevant to actual aircraft design."

The aircraft will have a modular design, which means that its wings and active flow control systems can be replaced in the future, allowing the aircraft to be used for additional tests after the CRANE program is completed. In a statement, DARPA says the X-65 could be completed and demonstrated as early as early 2025, with first flight in the summer of 2025."

This plane will work like many whistles. Air released rapidly from many small holes changes the plane's direction.