DARPA researching wings of GENERAL GALAXY's YF-21

[Zer0 Kay]

Follow the link and go down to the picture of the venus flytrap and read the associated article. Maliable wings sound familiar? DARPA realeasing information usually means that they already have had some success. When do we get to see the veritechs?

http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_Cool102204,,00.html

[Zer0 Kay]

Your making a lot of assumtions - that sort of varitable wing idea has been being studied since the 70's, infact up until the Raptor won the latest Interceptor compatition contract, the previous (and may I say ugly) looking fighter had wings that folded downwards during VTOL flight to help provide stability.

OK first which fighter are you talking about? The YF-23's wings didn't do anything. The only fold down wing I've seen is on the XB-70 Valkyrie http://palpatine.chez.tiscali.fr/Warfare/Planes/XB70/XB70.html
but that was a bomber and it wasn't VTOL, don't know how bent wings would stabalize VTO though. Any links? It is not really a stretch since they want the wing surface to be able to mold for multiple conditions rather than bend at a joint for a single purpose. You sure it was the ATF compition and not the JSF competition? I recall one that looked like they took an intruders air intake and stuck it onto a smaller aircraft very ugly not that the JSF is that pretty.

[Zer0 Kay]

The variable* wing on the YF-21 is definitely still sci-fi. Sure DARPA keeps secrets, but in such cases there would be zero information released on the subject.

Lockheed didn't go about issuing reports to the media when they began bagging millions of government dollars to research stealth technology, because the project was secret.

If DARPA or, more likely, one of the major aircraft co's had a super duper secret variable wing aircraft, they wouldn't tell us anything about it.

But I do believe the cool transformable wing concept is within the realm of real science, heck a bird can change the shape of it's wing it's a matter of the science achieving a level that allows us to replicate whats already occurring in nature via mechanical means. Whether or not that winds up being cost effective or not is a different story.

Ah but the military let out information of the F-117 after many years of use. Maybe there is already an aircraft that is capable of moldable wing configurations, and they've been using it for 20 years. Besides what better way to control information then by giving the people what they want and just not keeping them up to date. Their developing railguns, moldable wings, microcarbon tubes, smart (trajectory correcting) bullets, programmable grenades (that will be able to be programmed to explode infront, above or behind the target.) The only thing they need to do is not tell us when the project is completed.