NG has recently unveiled their concepts for next generation jetliners under the NASA “Environmentally Responsible Aviation” program. NG is not known for airliners, but rather military vehicles… most famously the B-2 stealth bomber. Not surprisingly, their jetliner concept looks a whole lot like a stealthy flying wing bomber. It seems a reasonable suspicion that their work under NASA contract either makes use of existing military design work… or will form the basis of future military design work.
Since the Northrop Grumman ERA N+2 design is revolutionary (at least in terms of airliner design), they have produced a design of a Subscale Test Vehicle. At 143-foot span, it’s about 60% the size of the passenger version and 55% the size of the cargo carrying final version.
The STV would seem to be sized right for a bomber, while the passenger and cargo carrying version would be rather large… more sized for arsenal aircraft, loaded with a vast number of cruise missiles and the like.
I realize this is the unclassified design, but those inlets just scream radar trap to me. Not an issue for an airliner, but if you’re trying to bodge a stealth strike aircraft out of an airliner design (did I just say that?), those inlets have to go.
Indeed, the inlets are anti-stealth. But the idea here is maximum fuel economy, and stealthy inlets are generally not a good approach to that. In fact, for an airliner, non-stealthy inlet might be a dire necessity… the rest of the design might be naturally stealthy enough that air traffic control might have an issue.
This bigger issue is… when was the last time Northrop built an airliner?
Alex, what is never?
(good thing I didn’t go all in on a Daily Double)
The Northrop Delta, circa 1933-36?
It depends on whether it has to be a Northrop product or simply an airliner that Jack Northrop was intimately involved with. If it’s the second, a lot of what he pioneered went into teh DC-1/2/3 series.
Radar stealthiness for airliners is becoming a bit moot… since ADS-B is supposed to replace radar for civilian flight anyway.
As the for the design itself… they can’t help themselves with straight lines in the planform, can they?!