When the U.S. Air Force launched the F-47—its new sixth-generation stealth fighter with a sleek profile—it wasn’t long before the circles of aviation began to notice something familiar. Its tailless configuration, high-recovery canards, and wide-nosed look seemed like a throwback to a distant experiment. To those who understand their X-planes, it was hard not to be reminded of the X-36.
The X-36 was no ordinary wind tunnel plaything or esoteric prototype. In the mid-1990s, McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) and NASA collaborated on defying traditional fighter design expectations. The X-36 was about accomplishing more with less, getting rid of the tail. In place of vertical and horizontal stabilizers, it employed canards mounted forward, a groundbreaking wing configuration, split ailerons, and a thrust-vectoring nozzle to remain in the air and fly.
Naturally, this type of radical design resulted in the plane being inherently unstable. But with a highly developed digital fly-by-wire system, the X-36 coped. The plane was controlled remotely, with a camera in the nose and a pilot sitting on the ground working a real fighter HUD. The other components provided engineers with almost full-scale impressions of how an otherwise tailless, hyper-agile fighter would act in actuality.
In addition to stabilizing the plane, the X-36 was a proving ground for adaptive flight control. In 1998, the Air Force Research Lab tested “RESTORE” software on the X-36—a system that would allow a fighter to self-adjust if it took damage in flight. It was among the first of machine learning’s military aviation demonstrations, and it foreshadowed what was to come: intelligent aircraft that can repair damage or failure without human intervention.
Flash forward to the present, and the lineage of design is apparent. The F-47 continues the same tailless design, with canards and a canopy configuration that resembles almost a mature X-36. Its wide nose undoubtedly accommodates an advanced radar suite, mirroring the sensor-forward ethos of the X-36. But more than a mere doppelganger, the F-47 appears to take the same fundamental concept: that high agility and stealth can be combined—if you possess the proper technology.
Canards are central to that equation. They assist with handling, particularly at high attack angles, but they’re a double-edged sword: fantastic for handling, not so fantastic for stealth on radar. That the F-47 features them implies Boeing has either worked out new stealthy materials or devious methods of controlling their radar profile, perhaps even making them retractable or contouring them to achieve minimal reflection.
There’s the F-47’s probable future role in manned-unmanned teaming, too. So long as there is a battlespace where one pilot could be in command of a swarm of drones, agility and extensive sensor coverage would be more important than an ultra-low radar cross-section in all directions. It’s a balancing act, and one that the F-47 appears well-suited to achieve.
The X-36 is not the only aircraft whispering in the F-47’s ear. Boeing’s “Bird of Prey” program during the ’90s investigated low-visibility fabrication and quick prototyping. Its sleek lines and dihedral wings appear to have made a mark. Lockheed’s X-44 Manta design—intended to flight-test thrust vectoring as the main flight control—never made it to the skies, but its concepts certainly continue to exist in the F-47’s flight systems. Even the abandoned A-12 Avenger II, which featured a flying wing configuration, foreshadowed where tailless stealth technology would go.
And of course, there are the black projects—such as the unreported YF-24 or Boeing’s MRF-24X study—that never hit the news but perhaps advanced the tailless fighter state of the art in silence. They are a sort of unofficial roadmap to the F-47.
So, what is the F-47 actually about? In a word, it’s the proof point. Decades of modeling, research, and testbed experimentation, and the U.S. might finally have a tailless, front-line fighter combat plane ready for today’s battlefield. It integrates stealth, maneuverability, smart flight computer code, and probably AI-augmented controls in a package that feels like science fiction come to life.
The X-36 might have resembled a strange little drone during its time, but its genetic material now courses through one of the most sophisticated fighters ever deployed by the U.S. The test succeeded, and the experiment is flying high once more.
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