The competition for air dominance has never been anything less than pushing against boundaries—sometimes transgressing physical limits such as sound speed, and other times redefining what a fighter plane might even be. During the 1990s, Boeing and NASA embarked on testing one of those revolutionary concepts: could a high-speed jet fly without a tail? That daring question fathered the Boeing X-36, a small but groundbreaking airplane that would go on to influence the design philosophy of future stealth fighters, including what would become the U.S. Air Force’s sixth-generation F-47.
In its development, McDonnell Douglas Phantom Works—later merged into Boeing—partnered with NASA to determine if a tailless aircraft could really stay stable and flyable. What they came up with resembled something torn from a futuristic design sketch: small, streamlined, and devoid of all the traditional control surfaces found on conventional fighters.
Reduced to slightly more than a quarter of a full-sized jet, the X-36 was 19 feet in length, weighed around 1,250 pounds, and was powered by a relatively humble 700-pound-thrust F112 turbofan engine. It wasn’t constructed for power or speed—it was constructed to demonstrate that extreme concepts would actually take to the air. Its canard-forward structure and broad, lambda-shaped wings provided it with a different and unusual appearance that immediately made it stand out from the skies.
Its maiden flight departed in May 1997 at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in California. Since it was a scale model, there was no pilot aboard; rather, it was remotely controlled by a ground-based test pilot with real-time video and a fighter-style heads-up display. Although it looked strange, the aircraft flew superbly. In 31 test flights and over 15 hours of flight time, the X-36 demonstrated agility and stability. It flew to well above 20,000 feet and withstood incredible angles of attack—up to 40 degrees—without falling out of the sky. For a tailless plane, that was nothing short of amazing.
The greatest challenge engineers overcame was stabilizing it. Eliminating the tail rendered the airplane inherently unstable in pitch and yaw, but that instability was converted into a benefit by advanced technology. The X-36 used a digital fly-by-wire system that constantly adjusted its canards, split ailerons, and thrust-vectoring nozzle to maintain balance and agility.
On top of that, it used one of the first applications of artificial intelligence to flight. A neural network named RESTORE was able to sense and correct system failure in real time, learning how to respond almost as if a living pilot. That made the X-36 not just nimble but also incredibly robust—an early preview of how AI could someday help human pilots in combat.
Despite the program never being developed into a full-fledged fighter, its impact permeated throughout Boeing’s subsequent experimental planes. Concepts derived from the X-36’s flight characteristics and stealth shaping were implemented in the Bird of Prey and the X-45 unmanned combat vehicle. Perhaps more significantly, the lessons learned from the X-36 would be incorporated into the development of the Air Force’s next-generation stealth fighter, the F-47—a design with the same tailless, canard-forward DNA but constructed with much more sophisticated systems.
The next F-47 is a direct offshoot of the concepts experimented with by the X-36. Its sleek, tailless form and wide fuselage are designed for stealth, maneuverability, and enhanced sensor integration. Differing from previous fighters, it’s also being developed to fly in concert with autonomous drones, enabling it to serve as the keystone of a manned-unmanned team. The idea of a tailless plane that was once an engineering dream is now the cornerstone of a new generation of air combat.
The X-36’s flight also belongs to a larger narrative of experimental stealth configurations. About the same time, Boeing’s Bird of Prey was taking stealth geometry to an extreme, and Lockheed’s X-44 MANTA was investigating fully tailless, delta-winged control. There are even rumors of the enigmatic YF-24, another test vehicle delving into similar concepts. But of them all, the X-36 was the one that married stealth, agility, and adaptive control into a single diminutive but revolutionary package.
In retrospect, the X-36 reminds us that some of aviation’s greatest leaps begin with modest, high-risk experiments. From a remote-controlled prototype, it evolved into a proof of concept that would revolutionize fighter design philosophy for decades to follow. It never fought and never carried arms, but its impact is undeniable.
Lessons it learned regarding control, stealth, and flight intelligence reverberate through each successive generation of aircraft. While the F-47 is about to occupy its place in the air, the passion of the X-36 never fades—the permanent representation of how imagination and innovation can forge the future of airpower.