Langy eustus
And while Grumman’s two X-29 demonstrators would go on to complete more than 400 successful test flights, their exotic design never made it any further than that.ĭARPA’s tests concluded that you could indeed get a great deal of maneuverability out a forward-swept wing design, but the design’s shortcomings outweighed its benefits. The F-16FSW ultimately never made it off the drawing board, with Grumman’s X-29 instead securing DARPA’s contract to further explore the value of the forward-swept wing design. This prompted DARPA’s pursuit of technology demonstrators, and later, the Soviet effort to field the Sukhoi Su-47, a “stealth” fighter that leveraged forward-swept wings and ultimately competed with the Su-57 to become Russia’s premier 5th generation fighter.Ĭould the F-16FSW have been better than the F-16 we’ve got? Because this issue worsens the faster you fly, traveling at high speeds with forward-swept wings could result in the wings bending so much that they structurally fail, resulting in the loss of the aircraft.īut by the 1980s, new composite materials promised to potentially solve this wing-strenth problem, making forward-swept wings potentially viable for high-performance applications. Forward-swept wing designs had a tendency to bend upward near the tip, which results in greater lift near the tip that would bend the wing even further. NASA and DARPA further believed a forward-swept wing design could offer more efficient flying at cruising speeds and potentially even a reduction in aerodynamic drag.īut the biggest challenge DARPA and others faced with such a design was something commonly referred to as “aeroelastic divergence,” or just “divergence.” This divergence issue can probably be best summed up as a problem with wing bending. An F-16 with forward-swept wings could also theoretically leverage a more aggressive angle of attack without stalling than an F-16 with a conventional pair of wings could match. William Greer)įorward-swept wings were thought to be more efficient while offering greater angle of attackĪ dynamically unstable forward-swept wing fighter that leveraged computer-aided fly-by-wire controls could theoretically be incredibly maneuverable, something that wasn’t possible before computers made their way into fighter fuselages. In fact, with the wings rooted at the rear of the aircraft, most fighters could then carry more weight in the front of the fuselage without negatively affecting the jet’s center of gravity.Ī Belgian F-16 Fighting Falcon receives fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker, assigned to the 340th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, while flying over Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Feb. Placing the wing roots at the rear of the aircraft also allowed for better weight distribution and a more efficient internal layout. That airflow direction also allows the wing’s ailerons to function better in a stall than they might in a rear-swept wing, offering better control when a pilot needs it most. But in a forward-swept wing design, that air flows toward the wing’s root at the fuselage of the aircraft where there’s greater lift and stability. As such, a stall in a conventional swept-wing aircraft often begins at the wingtip, causing a pitch-up that exacerbates the stall and makes recovery even more difficult. If your airplane is going to stall before mine, I can shoot you out of the sky in a heartbeat,” explained Christian Gelzer, chief historian at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research CenterĪir flowing over a traditional rear-swept wing flows toward its rear-most point, which is the wing-tip. “At the time, this maneuverability was believed to be absolutely essential to fighter superiority. The most significant among them would be increased maneuverability thanks to an inherently unstable design. So when it came time to field a fighter with its wings on backward, General Dynamics looked to their budget-friendly Fighting Falcon for the job.į-16FSW: What’s the deal with Forward-Swept Wings?įorward-swept wings may look silly (or entirely rad, depending on which GI Joe toys you played with as a kid) but the prevailing wisdom of the ’80s suggested that flipping the wings of a fighter could offer a number of significant benefits in a fight. Air Force continues to operate a fleet of more than a thousand F-16s, with literally thousands more in service for nations around the world like Isreal, Pakistan, Denmark, Greece, Indonesia, and Norway. This aircraft has proven so capable, reliable, and affordable that the U.S.