And 'oh by the way'...

I should quit and accept my academic losses but as usual I have yet another "oh btw...", this time related to the Northrop 'flying wing'.

Apparently Northrop isn't done with its involvement in the 'flying wing' concept. Northrop-Grumman Corp has a current contract to design and build aircraft for a flying wing variant of a bomber which uses the flying wing (sort of) configuration. The plane is the B-21 which is pictured below. Note this is not an X (eXperimental) variant which would have been designated XB-21. The contract includes production of 40 - 80 aircraft.

 

Northrop-Grumman B-21 prototype.

Not the 'boomerang' configuration I think of when I think of a 'flying wing', but it meets the essential criteria. The B-21 surface configuration is intended to minimize radar reflection to make weapons-tracking of the bomber more difficult. To my eye this photo is of a smallish plane. The published specs, however, say the bomber in these photos has a wingspan of 130 ft.

An elevated view of the B-21 showing the wing configuration.

So the 'flying wing' concept isn't dead. This prototype is a subsonic aircraft with top speed according to Wikipedia of Mach 0.8+. Mach 0.8+ refers to a top speed of 0.8 x the speed of sound. The "+" in the speed value? This probably suggests that 'Mach 0.8' is vague number because the actual top speed is probably classified. Apparently it has a payload of 20,000 lbs in the weapons bay.

According to the Wikipedia article Northrop-Grumman was awarded the contract without comparative disclosure of all competing bids. There was at least one competing bid from the team of Lockheed-Martin & Boeing Aircraft. Lockheed-Martin/Boeing contested the award as there had been no announcement of all competing bids. Later the USAF announced the winning bid confirming Northrop-Grumman indeed had the lowest bid.

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