The American company JetZero will build an aircraft demonstrator with a blended wing and a BWB (Blended Wing Body) fuselage for the needs of the US Air Force (USAF). The BWB concept offers a significant increase in efficiency and expansion of air transport. For both military and civilian use.
The $235 million contract is part of the USAF’s effort to develop the BWB concept into an operationally usable form. The contract award concludes a year-long tendering process by the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and revives 30-year-old hopes of introducing the BWB concept to military and commercial airliners.
The BWB concept was conceived by a McDonnell Douglas team led by Robert Liebeck, which included JetZero founder Mark Page, in the early 1990s. Ten years later, NASA funded a small Boeing X-48 demonstrator with a wingspan of 6.4 meters. He made 122 flights between 2007 and 2013.
A similarly small demonstrator from JetZero will take off in the coming weeks. It is to have a wingspan of 23 feet (seven meters) and 12.5% of the dimensions of the “large” demonstrator (span apparently 56 meters). Construction and testing of the small demonstrator is underway under a 2021 NASA Sustainable Flight Demonstrator (SFD) grant.
Completion of the construction of the “big” demonstrator is expected in 2026, flight tests will begin a year later. According to the Aviation Week portal, the demonstrator is to have the dimensions of a Boeing 767. Despite the overall size, JetZero states that the test (and eventual production) machine will have half the weight and need half the power of the B767 engines.
JetZero’s previously shown BWB vision of the Z-5 aircraft; larger photo / JetZero
2023-08-18 11:36:50
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