Just before U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced on Aug. 16 that California-based JetZero had won perhaps several hundred million dollars to develop and build a Blended Wing Body (BWB) demonstrator aircraft, Kendall said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks “have been proponents of this type of technology ever since they walked into the Pentagon.”
“The [BWB] contract is the result of a collaborative effort between the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Innovation Unit [DIU] with assistance from DoD’s Office of Strategic Capital and represents an important milestone in the development of a potentially transformational technology,” Hicks said in a statement on Aug. 17. “For the military, projected BWB fuel savings of 30 percent over traditional aircraft would help mitigate logistics risks and enable critical capabilities such as increased range, loiter time, and offload capabilities. A successful BWB would be good news for the department, our warfighters, the U.S. aerospace industry and the American taxpayer.”
Under the BWB concept, the wings are not distinct from the aircraft body but blended into it, and the engine may be on top of the aircraft or embedded in the airframe to provide more lift, range, payload, and less acoustic signature.
JetZero plans the BWB to enter service in 2030 and to have its first flight in 2027 (Defense Daily, Aug. 16).
JetZero and Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] development of BWB may inform future cargo aircraft and the Next Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS), both of which are to operate in high-threat environments over long distances, including the Pacific theater.
Kendall said that the BWB concept has gained significant commercial interest and that the Air Force would like to leverage commercial demand for BWB planes.
The Air Force’s Operational Energy Directorate (SAF/IEN), which has been sponsoring BWB, has said that tanker, cargo, and non-stealth bombers account for 60 percent of the Air Force’s annual fuel burn of 1.2 billion gallons and that BWB aircraft across the tanker, cargo, and non-stealth bomber fleets could save the Air Force $1 billion annually in fuel costs and yield annual emissions reductions of 3.3 million metric tons.
SAF/IEN has worked with DIU and NASA to explore BWB design, performance, and long-term viability (Defense Daily, Aug. 4, 2022).