The X-44 MANTA is one of those never-flown experimental aircraft that nonetheless had a lasting impact on the design of fighter jets in the future. Spawned from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in the late 1990s under the patronage of NASA and the U.S. Air Force, it was an airplane that posed a radical question: What if a fighter didn’t require a tail at all?
Then, the F-22 was only just beginning its initial test flights, and the F-35 was largely a conception. The X-44 was different. It defied the very architecture of what a fighter plane was. In place of typical stabilizers or rudders, the MANTA, or Multi-Axis No-Tail Aircraft, did something different altogether. It had a sleek delta-wing configuration, no vertical fins, and no moving surfaces to operate the aircraft in flight. Instead of employing ailerons or elevators, the plane would be using 3D thrust vectoring entirely. Essentially, it would be using the direction-giving power of its jet engines to turn.
This wasn’t a slight engineering adjustment—it was a radical departure from forty years of fighter aircraft design. Without vertical and horizontal tails, the radar signature would be minimized. As one defense analyst put it, vertical surfaces are a radar’s best friend. They’re sleek, reflective, and easy to spot.
Take them out, and you’re left with something much more slippery. The X-44’s single, curved wing-body design was all about reducing visibility. In theory, it wouldn’t look as much like a jet and more like a bird—or a blip on the radar screen. Imagine a B-2 stealth bomber, but nimble and battle-capable.
Stealth, of course, was only half the story. The second large component was agility. Traditional jets rely on their tails to climb, bank, and dodge. In the X-44, everything rested on the accuracy and dependability of its thrust vectoring system. Lockheed engineers hoped for an airplane that could twist, pitch, and roll through only engine exhaust. That meant saving weight, removing mechanical components, and perhaps stretching its range by opening up internal space for fuel. It was a high-stakes, high-reward bet.
On paper, the plane seemed like it would be a monster. Estimated speeds were on the order of Mach 2, service altitudes close to 49,000 feet, and a combat range of nearly 2,000 miles. It would’ve mounted all its weapons internally—missiles, bombs, possibly even directed-energy systems in the future—keeping its shape slim and stealthy. The whole design was based on efficiency: less material, less drag, and highest survivability.
But as with so many ambitious plans in aviation, reality introduced complications. The plan to eliminate all conventional control surfaces meant that if the thrust vectoring system failed during flight, there was no backup. There’d be nothing to control it with. For a military jet designed to survive dogfights, such vulnerability was a primary concern. As one commentator wrote, the design would have succeeded only if its flight control system were all but perfect, which was asking a great deal at the time.
By the early 2000s, the X-44 idea was put on the back burner. The Pentagon’s priorities had changed, funds were low, and post-9/11 realities made tomorrow’s air superiority ideas secondary to more practical, handy platforms. The F-22 was capped, and the F-35—less revolutionary—was better suited to what the Pentagon required at the time: a multi-role aircraft that could do a little of everything. The X-44 was genius, but too specialized, too costly, and just a little too pre-eminent in its time.
Yet the concept did not disappear. If anything, the essence of the X-44 lived on and developed. Fast forward to today, and you’ll find its DNA embedded in the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. Though much about NGAD remains classified, early glimpses and mockups suggest a familiar silhouette: sleek, tailless, and optimized for both stealth and performance. It’s clear that many of the MANTA’s design principles were simply waiting for the right technology—and the right time—to be reborn.
But it’s not limited to the United States. Other nations have caught on as well. Experts have noted surprisingly familiar echoes of current tailless stealth concepts coming fromAsiaa,, with what the X-44 had discussed decades ago. Whether it’s the wing sweep angles or the absence of vertical tails, the inspiration is apparent. Full-spectrum stealth—for radar avoidance from every angle—is now a goal to which leading air powers want to have equal access.
In retrospect, it’s easy to bury the X-44 in the graveyard of abandoned prototypes. But that would be to entirely miss the point. What the MANTA did was advance the debate. It demonstrated that outlandish concepts, even ones that never get beyond the drawing board, have the power to shift how engineers and strategists think. Today’s tailless, AI-powered, ultra-stealth fighters owe a significant debt to the MANTA’s unassuming, ambitious heritage.