Grumman X-29: The impossible fighter jet with inverted wings

CNN
Grumman X-29: The impossible fighter jet with inverted wings CNN | James Alexander Michie

The Grumman X-29 was an experimental fighter aircraft that served as the basis to investigate a set of new technologies, to be applied in the future in other fighter aircraft of the fifth generation of jet fighters; the most prominent was the inverted arrow wing and the canard flight surfaces.

It was created at the height of the Cold War by a conglomerate of giants: NASA, the US Air Force. The “men in black” at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the aerospace giant Grumman, flew for the first time in 1984 as part of a search to build the last fighter plane.

Likewise, it was a flight test aircraft and laboratory of new technologies, of single-engine design, with inverted wings and canard’s front wings, for high maneuverability. The inherent aerodynamic instability of this configuration required the use of modern computerized fly-by-wire controls, and it was necessary, the use of advanced composite materials, to manufacture the wing, sufficiently rigid, but without being too heavy, the design that then it was applied successfully in the new Fifth Generation aircraft of jet fighters.

Bold but unstable innovation

It has been indicated that there is no aircraft like the Grumman X-29. And its amazing wings swept forward were just one of his many bold innovations.

Even so, it is important to mention that its highly experimental design made it the most aerodynamically unstable aircraft ever built.

In fact, Christian Gelzer, chief historian of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Southern California (where the plane was tested), said in a telephone interview that “It was unflyable — literally — without a digital flight computer on board, which made corrections to the flight path 40 times a second”.

At the same time he said, “The engineers said that if the three flight computers had failed together, the airplane would have broken up around the pilot before the pilot had a chance to eject”.

It should be noted that the wings dragged forward have been highly criticized, however, make the airflow in the opposite direction, moving in from the tips of the wings. Therefore, the positions tend to start closer to the fuselage, leaving the ailerons running longer and giving the pilots much-needed control.

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Source: Jacopo Prisco | CNN

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