From the early days of jet propulsion to the cutting-edge work today, experimental aircraft—better known to the public as X-planes—have consistently been at the forefront. Built to push the limits of the possible in the air, these lean, often clandestine planes don’t simply try out new tech; they set the course for military aviation’s future. If you’re curious about where air combat is heading, the answers are often hidden in the dry lakebeds and wind tunnels where X-planes are born.
One of the most intriguing of these aircraft was the X-36, a small but groundbreaking jet created in the 1990s by McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing) in collaboration with NASA. This was not your typical test plane—it was a flight test of how a next-gen fighter should look and perform without the traditional tail scheme. It substituted that with canards in the front, split ailerons on a uniquely shaped wing, and a thrust-vectoring nozzle that enabled it to turn like nothing in the air. The whole thing looked more science fiction than a real airplane.
But form wasn’t everything. The X-36 was designed to be deliberately unstable—i.e., it took a highly advanced fly-by-wire system to simply stay airborne. Such computer control is commonplace on modern fighters, but back then it was cutting-edge. At a little over 1,200 pounds fully fueled and driven by a small but highly efficient Williams F112 engine, the X-36 flew off and landed a total of 31 successful test flights in 1997 at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. Engineers were left impressed. The aircraft handled well in a variety of flight conditions, showing swift rolls and response that suggested tailless fighters weren’t only possible—they could be improved upon.
Little more than a test bed, the X-36 planted seeds that have influenced newer aircraft. The F-47, say, the Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter, borrows its design vocabulary from a number of features of the X-36. Early photos of the F-47 show a wide nose, bubble canopy, and perhaps canard foreplanes—design cues that will not seem misplaced on the X-36. While the final shape of the F-47 is classified, it’s hard not to see a genetic link between the two.
And the X-36 wasn’t alone. Around the same time, Lockheed Skunk Works was working on the X-44 Manta, another tailless aircraft employing heavy use of thrust vectoring. Little is known, but the idea was to simplify the airframe with the hope of leveraging engine thrust to maneuver the aircraft—something that has obvious stealth and performance benefits.
Even canceled programs like the A-12 Avenger II and Boeing Bird of Prey helped add to the growing body of information about stealth shaping, radar evasions, and cost-savvy production methods.
Most of this work occurred at NASA Armstrong (formerly Dryden), an institution with a tradition of expansion. It is there that the X-1 broke the sound barrier and where the X-15 hung in the balance of space. More recent projects like the X-48 (blended wing body), X-53 (aeroelastic wing), and X-56A (multi-role testbed) have continued this tradition of pushing the capabilities of planes. These are not science experiments—these are blueprints for airplanes to come, both military and civilian.
Today, even the experimental community is active. DARPA’s SPRINT program is pioneering the integration of vertical takeoff with high-speed performance, making way for new classes of aircraft that do not need runways.
Aurora Flight Sciences, in partnership with Boeing, is developing a demonstrator that locates fans inside a blended wing body for vertical lift and aerodynamic forward flight. If all goes well, it will fundamentally change the way special operations, rapid response, and air mobility missions are executed.
What is great throughout all these efforts is the attitude propelling them. Experimental planes are all about asking bold questions—what if we removed the tail? What if we left out the runway? What if wings could flex while flying?
Then, engineers build those ideas into reality, test by test. The X-planes are not stepping stones; they are the anvil on which the future of airpower is shaped. And as the legacy of the X-36 proves, the most left-field concepts more often than not are the foundations for the aircraft that dominate the skies of tomorrow.