Rex Plane News Today

Official website of the IVAO HQ-SOD Special Operations Department

Official website of the IVAO HQ-SOD Special Operations Department

Bell just released a video showing how its folding rotor design works on a high-speed sled in advance of integrating it on a DARPA X-plane.

NASA’s newest X-plane rolled out last week. Though pitched as potentially ushering in an era of supersonic transport its real goal is not commensurate with its cost.

The Bell X-1 program showed that the United States aerospace efforts exhibited maximum innovation and ingenuity. It was an exciting time for aviation as the aircraft ushered in the supersonic age.

The Air Force and Boeing developed the X-20 Dyna-Soar (Dynamic Soaring) from 1959 to 1962. Intended as a reusable recon and research craft boosted by a Titan rocket, the craft was also envisioned as a hypersonic bomber. Indeed, the X-20 had all the makings of a game-changing platform before it was cancelled in 1963.

Aurora Flight Sciences has been chosen by DARPA to build a full-scale X-plane to demonstrate the viability of active flow control actuators for primary flight control.

The Grumman X-29 is one of the more obscure experimental aircraft in aviation history that failed to make it past the testing phase. 

The X-36 had a design that was truly one of a kind and made aviation history in a number of unique ways. 

DARPA has selected four firms to design a 500-mph VTOL X-plane. Only one has a relatively proven design.