Can China’s hypersonic drone carrier bring Nasa’s ‘scissor wing’ dream to life?
Chinese engineers resurrect radical design for an aircraft that can fly at five times the speed of sound, releasing drones in its wake.
Chinese aerospace engineers are revisiting a decades-old, largely abandoned aviation concept – the oblique rotating wing – and transforming it into a potential cornerstone of future warfare: an unstaffed hypersonic mother ship capable of flying at five times the speed of sound and unleashing a swarm of drones behind enemy lines.
Drawing inspiration from Nasa’s quirky AD-1 experimental aircraft of the 1970s – a small jet-driven plane with a “scissor wing” that pivoted diagonally across the fuselage – researchers in China have reimagined the oblique wing as the key to solving one of aerospace engineering’s most daunting challenges: efficient, stable flight across the entire speed spectrum, from take-off to hypersonic cruise to landing.
Unlike conventional aircraft, which must compromise between low-speed lift and high-speed drag, or swing-wing fighters that adjust sweep symmetry on both sides, the proposed Chinese design features a single, centrally mounted wing that rotates up to 90 degrees.
At low speeds, the wing sits perpendicular to the fuselage, maximising lift with a high lift-to-drag ratio of 9.1 – ideal for efficient take-off and subsonic cruise. As speed increases, the wing begins to pivot. At transonic speeds near Mach 1, it swings to 45 degrees, one side forward, the other aft, redistributing airflow and mitigating shock wave formation.
This configuration suppresses wave drag while maintaining lift, achieving a lift-to-drag ratio of 5.6 – a remarkable balance in the treacherous transonic regime.
Then, at Mach 5, the wing completes its rotation, aligning parallel to the fuselage and effectively merging with the top of the aircraft.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3321844/can-chinas-hypersonic-drone-carrier-bring-nasas-scissor-wing-dream-life?module=inline&pgtype=article
PLA team releases photo of hypersonic ‘morphing’ missile that can change shape at Mach 5
China’s groundbreaking design features retractable wings that minimise drag for high-speed cruising.
Chinese military scientists have unveiled a rare glimpse into one of the most advanced frontiers of aerospace technology: a prototype of a morphing hypersonic vehicle capable of flying at speeds exceeding Mach 5.
The missile, revealed in a published peer-reviewed paper, features a pair of retractable wings – a groundbreaking design that allows it to dynamically adapt its aerodynamic profile mid-flight.
When stowed inside the fuselage, the wings minimise drag for high-speed cruising. When extended, they generate additional lift and significantly improve manoeuvrability.
Crucially, the degree of wing deployment can be finely adjusted, enabling real-time changes to the vehicle’s overall aerodynamic shape and flight characteristics – a capability long considered the “holy grail” of hypersonic flight.
The design was detailed in a paper published on October 20 in Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica, China’s leading aerospace journal, by a research team led by Professor Wang Peng from the College of Aerospace Science and Engineering at the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT).
The study confirmed the vehicle’s novel control algorithms and key components had successfully passed hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) ground tests – a critical milestone indicating the system is not just theoretical, but viable for real-world deployment.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3330973/pla-team-releases-photo-hypersonic-morphing-missile-can-change-shape-mach-5
FYI, the US has zero hypersonic capability
on the plus side, we have gigantic obsolete floating targets called aircraft carriers
unless you're one of the few that know the houthis already destroyed 3 of them