Wings

Aurora Flight Sciences is now putting the wings on the X-65 experimental drone. This is an important step forward for the X-65, which is designed to maneuver with bursts of air rather than traditional control surfaces. This is technology that could have significant implications for future military and civilian aircraft developments, especially when it comes to stealthy designs.

The X-65 is being developed under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program, which kicked off back in 2020. DARPA subsequently chose Aurora Flight Sciences, a subsidiary of Boeing, to proceed alone with the development of its design. Aurora moved into the latest phase of the program in 2024 and is now targeting a first flight next year. CRANE has suffered several delays and cost growth over the years, which we will come back to later on.

“The wings have arrived — the next big milestone for X‑65!” Aurora Flight Sciences wrote in a post on its official account on X today. “Built at our WV [West Virginia] facility, the triangular wings enable active flow control testing across multiple sweeps. Integration is underway in VA as we push toward first flight for the @DARPA CRANE program.”

In November 2025, Aurora had also announced progress in construction of the central fuselage. The company has also done wind tunnel testing of subscale models, as well as digital modeling in past phases of CRANE.

The X-65 has a so-called Co-Planar Joined Wing (CJW) planform that includes two sets of wings attached that merge together at the tips, creating the triangular shape on either side. They also have small extensions that extend from those tips, giving the drone a 30-foot wingspan. The design also has a twin vertical tail arrangement.

There is a chin air intake under the forward fuselage, as well as a single exhaust. Renderings have shown that the design will have on t op of the forward end of the fuselage. At the time of writing, neither Aurora nor DAPRA appear to have disclosed details about the drone’s main propulsion arrangement. The X-65 is said to have a gross weight of approximately 7,000 pounds.

As noted, the most intrigueing aspect of the X-65 is the banks of active flow control (AFC) “effectors” that use bursts of highly pressurized air to roll, pitch, and yaw. Traditionally, fixed-wing aircraft use a mixture of flaps, rudders, and other surfaces that physically move to maneuver in flight.

“The AFC system supplies pressurized air to fourteen AFC effectors embedded across all flying surfaces,” according to a press release Aurora put out last year. “The triangular wing design enables testing across multiple wing sweeps and is modular with replaceable outboard wings and swappable AFC effectors to allow for future testing of additional AFC designs.”

“The X-65 will be built with two sets of control actuators – traditional flaps and rudders as well as AFC effectors embedded across all the lifting surfaces,” a 2024 press release from DARPA also notes. “This will both minimize risk and maximize the program’s insight into control effectiveness. The plane’s performance with traditional control surfaces will serve as a baseline; successive tests will selectively lock down moving surfaces, using AFC effectors instead.”

“The X-65 conventional surfaces are like training wheels to help us understand how AFC can be used in place of traditional flaps and rudders,” Dr. Richard Wlezien, then the CRANE program manager at DARPA, also said at that time. “We’ll have sensors in place to monitor how the AFC effectors’ performance compares with traditional control mechanisms, and these data will help us better understand how AFC could revolutionize both military and commercial craft in the future.”

“We’re building the X-65 as a modular platform – wing sections and the AFC effectors can easily be swapped out – to allow it to live on as a test asset for DARPA and other agencies long after CRANE concludes,” Wlezien also noted.

Being able to eliminate traditional moving control surfaces presents a host of potential benefits, as TWZ has detailed in past reporting on the CRANE program:

“Getting rid of traditional control surfaces inherently allows for a design to be more aerodynamic, and therefore fly in a more efficient manner, especially at higher altitudes. An aircraft with an AFC system doesn’t need the various actuators and other components to move things like ailerons and rudders, offering new ways to reduce weight and bulk.”

“A lighter and more streamlined aircraft design using an AFC system might be capable of greater maneuverability. This could be particularly true for uncrewed types that also do not have to worry about the physical limitations of a pilot.”

“The elimination of so many moving parts also means fewer things that can break, improving safety and reliability. This would do away with various maintenance and logistics requirements, too. It might make a military design more resilient to battle damage and easier to fix, as well.”

All of this could be especially valuable for stealthy aircraft designs, as we previously wrote:

“While all of this could be beneficial for many aircraft type, AFC technology could be especially significant when applied to stealth designs. Designers of stealthy aircraft have to be mindful of any joints or other gaps between exposed surfaces, and try to generally keep them to a minimum, to ensure the radar cross-section remains as low as possible.“

“As such, traditional control surfaces, which by definition cannot always be flush with the rest of the aircraft’s external shape, are a major and currently inescapable issue. Fly-by-wire designs also keep these surfaces fluttering at all times to keep the stealthy aircraft stable in forward flight. AFC technology holds the promise of being able to change this reality and make it easier to optimize the radar-evading qualities of a stealthy design. Other technologies, like the ability to dynamically warp wing structures to provide flight control, could also help in future stealthy aircraft radar signature control.”

A design like the X-65 that has the option of using either traditional control surfaces or AFCs could offer further flexibility.

Deeper exploration of the potential of an AFC design is exactly the point of DARPA’s CRANE program, which is now aiming to kick off actual flight testing next year. As mentioned, there have been multiple delays in work on the X-65 over the years. The original goal was for the drone to fly for the first time in 2025.

“The costs to produce the prototype aircraft for test flights ended up being higher than expected” and “DARPA chose to ‘strategically pause’ the X-65’s development and reevaluate the program,” Defense News reported in November 2025. Aurora also “confirmed technical and supply chain challenges were a factor in the program delays, as well as the inherent riskiness involved in working on a DARPA project.”

It should be noted here that this is not the first time AFC technology has been experimented with. U.K.-headquartered BAE Systems, which also submitted a design for CRANE, tested a flying subscale AFC-equipped design called MAGMA in the 2010s, which you can learn more about here.

MAGMA first flight, September 2017

Pentagon budget documents show that DARPA has received nearly $63 million in funding for CRANE since Fiscal Year 2024, when the program entered its third phase. DARPA is not asking for any additional money for this effort in Fiscal Year 2027, which it says reflects the expectation that it will conclude by the end of next year. As DARPA has said in the past, future programs could further continued use of the X-65 drone, as well as the technology it demonstrates.

“We’re excited to continue our longstanding partnership with DARPA to complete the build of the X-65 aircraft and demonstrate the capabilities of active flow control in flight,” Larry Wirsing, Aurora’s Vice President VP of aircraft development, said in a statement last year. “The X-65 platform will be an enduring flight test asset, and we’re confident that future aircraft designs and research missions will be able to leverage the underlying technologies and flight test data.”

With its wings finally delivered, the X-65 continues to take shape as Aurora and DARPA push toward finally getting the drone and its novel control arrangement into the air.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

While Kelsey Plum was out with an ankle injury for the past week, Sparks coach Lynne Roberts called her the “head of the snake” of the team’s offense.

Plum, who entered the night leading the WNBA in scoring, netted 27 points but couldn’t save the Sparks from a fourth-quarter collapse and a 104-96 loss to the Dallas Wings at Crypto.com Arena on Friday night.

The Sparks’ offense looked better, but it had no answers for the three-headed attack of Arike Ogunbowale, Paige Bueckers and Jessica Shepherd, who spearheaded the Wings’ 63% shooting effort in the fourth quarter to seal the win.

The Sparks have lost three consecutive games for the first time since last June. They lost to Connecticut on May 30 before a poor offensive outing against Las Vegas on Tuesday. With Plum, they eclipsed their 69-point total from that game by midway through the third quarter Friday.

But Dallas’ offense was too much for the WNBA’s worst defense.

The Sparks led by as much as nine in the second quarter but surrendered the lead late in the quarter as the Wings shot 55% to cut the lead to one by halftime.

The Sparks led 78-77 going into the fourth after a back-and-forth third quarter, but Dallas went on a 15-5 run to lead by eight. It was the only cold quarter for the Sparks, who scored just 18 points, with more than half of their offense coming from Plum.

It was a two-point game with under two minutes to play when Ogunbowale collected a rebound off her own shot to give the Wings a two-possession lead before Plum missed a three-pointer and a free throw.

Nneka Ogwumike notched a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds while Ariel Atkins scored 16 points.

Ogunbowale scored a game-high 30 points while Bueckers posted a career-high 14 assists and Shepherd had 22 points and 15 rebounds.

Wings guard Odyssey Sims left the court in a wheelchair in the second quarter after she twisted her left ankle coming down from a rebound attempt; she didn’t return. In the fourth, Aziaha James had to be carried off by her teammates after she got hit hard by an Ogwumike screen.

The Sparks will host the expansion Portland Fire (6-6) on Sunday, who lost a tight game against Phoenix on Friday night.

Satellite imagery has emerged showing China’s two massive stealthy flying-wing high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft at its secretive test base near Malan. TWZ first identified both of the previously unseen aircraft last year in Planet Labs archived imagery of the airfield, which is known to be on the leading edge of the PLA’s unmanned combat aircraft development efforts. However, this is the first time both have been captured outside their hangars simultaneously, or on the main apron at all. Overall, the image, dated March 26th, 2026, underscores the major uptick of very advanced drone testing activity at the installation.

The flying wing with the longest wingspan (red arrow in the image at the top of the article), which some have dubbed “WZ-X,” and what we refer to as “The Monster of Malan,” is parked on the main apron next to the runway. The very large flying wing has a span of approximately 173 feet — roughly the width of a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. You can read more about this impressive aircraft in our previous coverage here and here. Other details about its true designation or its manufacturer remain unknown.

The second large flying wing (green arrow) is seen in the image sitting outside a hangar that is part of the sprawling new high-security facility on the opposite side of the complex. It features a ‘cranked kite’ planform with a wingspan of approximately 137 feet, although it would appear to have a significantly higher gross weight and likely lower operating ceiling than its wider stablemate. Based on our previous analysis, this variant is suited for the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) role, but could also work as a supersized unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) capable of performing very long-range heavy strike missions.

Both of these aircraft appear to have been flying now for a number of months. You can read about this here and here.

There is also what appears to be a stealth fighter-like drone (orange arrow) and a Xi’an Y-20 transport plane on the main apron in the image.

China has shown off a very large number of fighter-drone concepts, very loosely similar to the U.S. Collaborative Combat Aircraft initiative, in recent years. A Chinese military parade in 2025 was really Beijing’s major public thrust into this area of advanced fighter-like drone development. Since then, testing of at least one configuration has been ramped up considerably.

Just reviewing Planet Labs archived images of Malan in recent months shows the aircraft configuration seen above to be very active at the base. This relatively large unmanned ‘fighter’, analogous to a manned light-to-medium weight fighter in size, is a tailless design that features a very similar planform as the J-XDS 6th generation manned fighter. It also appears similar in shape to another CCA-like aircraft that has been photographed flying.

One drone shown off during China’s big military parade looks very similar to it, in particular. But regardless, this general design appears to be a focus of testing at the base.

Other mysterious aircraft have appeared at the installation as well, which is clearly set up specifically to run many programs within its high-security confines at any given time.

Beijing is actively pursuing a range of flying-wing drones of various sizes, including large HALE drones, designed to perform a diverse set of missions, including ISR and strike. For many years, TWZ has assessed that this was an area of the Chinese aviation industry most likely to see an explosion of investment. The WZ-X is still the largest Chinese design in terms of wingspan that we have seen in this category to date. The cranked-kite design is certainly the heaviest.

This new look at China’s two large flying wing combat drones comes as we got our first good look at America’s own RQ-180 HALE stealth drone, which has been flying for some time and is now being used operationally. It also comes as China is rushing ahead on all fronts with its next generation air combat ecosystem, and making impressively quick progress to show for its efforts. Still, a formidable looking aircraft doesn’t mean it can fight as impressively as part of a joint force as it looks, or survive against enemy air defenses. Regardless, China is clearly betting substantially on advanced and large unmanned flying wing designs.

Contact the author: ian.ellis-jones@teamrecurrent.io

Sikorsky unveiled a new incarnation of its Armed Black Hawk helicopter at the Army Aviation Warfighting Summit in Nashville last week. TWZ’s Jamie Hunter spoke with Sikorsky’s Matt Isaacson about how this expands mission sets and provides greater flexibility for the Black Hawk, while minimizing the need for separate types with an air arm’s H-60/S-70 fleet.

​Check out our full tour of the aircraft and its weapons:

The H-60 Black Hawk Gunship Evolves With New Wings And Weapons

Contact the author: tyler@twz.com