Decades of looking for stealth and maneuverability have driven the evolution of U.S. fighter planes, replacing engineers and test pilots with the need to defy conventional thinking and reimagine what’s possible in a combat aircraft.
One of the boldest developments along the way has been trying to create tailless fighters—planes that eliminate the classic vertical fins in favor of more aerodynamic, radar-sneaky designs. The payoff has been a decades-long journey punctuated with brash prototypes, failure, and breakthroughs that modestly redefined the combat flying of tomorrow.
That tale finally took to the skies starting in the 1990s with the McDonnell Douglas X-36, a small experimental aircraft built in cooperation with NASA. At just 28 percent the weight of a conventional fighter, it was engineered to provide an answer to a monumental question: would a tailless airplane fly—and fight? With a Williams F112 turbofan that weighed just 1,250 pounds, the X-36 used canard foreplanes, dual ailerons, and a thrust-vectoring nozzle instead of conventional tail fins.
On paper, it was a handful. A plane without a tail is flightless because it lacks pitch- and yaw-structural stability. But with computer fly-by-wire controls adjusting in small increments, fraction by fraction, the X-36 defied skeptics. In 31 Dryden Center test flights at NASA, it was incredibly agile and stable over a significant performance envelope.
At roughly the same time, Lockheed Martin was flight-testing an even more experimental aircraft: the X-44 MANTA, or Multi-Axis No-Tail Aircraft. Effectively a tail-less F-22 Raptor, it tried to combine the radar-scattering signature of a stealth bomber such as the B-2 with the flight characteristics of a fighter.
The thinking was that thrust-vectoring would suffice to control all three axes of motion—pitch, yaw, and roll—and additionally eliminate radar signatures from the fins. The program never proceeded beyond the drawing board, casualties of budget fluctuations, but its design ideas weren’t wasted.
When the F-22 Raptor went into service in 2005, it superseded air dominance with an upgrade. With its stealthy profile, supersonic cruise in afterburner-free flight, and advanced avionics, it set the air domination standard. Dual F119 engines, internally carried weapons, and sensor fusion provided it with greater power and survivability. Despite its breathtaking performance, however, it was limited to 195 in production as priorities on the defense front changed.
Lockheed Martin even experimented with a bomber version—the FB-22—that sacrificed some maneuverability for range and carrying capacity. It featured longer wings, increased fuel, and internal bomb bays to carry up to 35 light bombs or massive bunker busters and stretched the tailless design even further by eliminating vertical tails to enhance stealth. Although canceled in 2006, the FB-22 also put its stamp on subsequent stealth aircraft design.
And here are all these experiments reflected in the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. Although specifics are secret, artists’ concepts of Boeing’s F-47 design reveal a jet with unmistakable X-36 DNA: shovel-nosed snout of enormous width to accommodate powerful sensors, bubble canopy for situational awareness, and canard foreplanes to sacrifice stealth for stability. With thrust-vectoring engines and leading-edge flight control systems, NGAD holds forth on radical stealth and dogfight-capable agility.
The strategic implications are staggering. Removing vertical tails deletes radar signatures but is made more challenging by the necessity for advanced digital controls to maintain the stability of the aircraft. It’s a trade that indicates just how advanced aerospace engineering has developed to be, giving up stealth, speed, and agility in one aircraft.
Above all, the tailless stealth fighter design is a revolution in the character of air combat. No more is it a matter of who banks tighter or flies quicker. Survival and supremacy in disputed airspace are all a matter of invisibility, cutting-edge sensors, and net warfare. From the initial X-36 to the next NGAD, every advancement has been about holding on to one thing first: air dominance. And with threats changing all the time, being able to innovate is what will keep that cutting edge cutting-edge.