Two-year flight delay for DARPA X-plane that steers with air bursts
By Stephen Losey
Thursday, Nov 20, 2025
The X-65 aircraft, which Aurora Flight Sciences is building for DARPA as part of the CRANE program, will use short air bursts to steer instead of traditional flaps and rudders. But rising costs, supply chain issues and technical challenges led DARPA to restructure the program, and the X-65's first flight will now happen more than two years later than originally planned. (Aurora Flight Sciences)
An experimental DARPA plane that would steer using bursts of air is expected to have its first flight in late 2027, more than two years later than originally planned, after the program was paused and restructured.
The unmanned X-65, being built by Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program, is designed to test a concept called “active flow control” to steer an aircraft.
This plane will not have mechanical flaps and rudders in its wings or tail to control its pitch, roll and yaw, as a conventional aircraft does. Instead, it is meant to use small air bursts to create a speed bump that alters how the air flows over the plane’s wings, which causes it to shift. The air bursts themselves do not push the wings, as do a spacecraft’s thrusters.
DARPA hopes the technology demonstrated with this program, called Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors, or CRANE, will allow aircraft designers to rethink how they build planes and design maneuvering systems. This system is intended to be more energy efficient, improve aerodynamics, and reduce the weight and mechanical complexity of aircraft.
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2025/11/20/two-year-flight-delay-for-darpa-x-plane-that-steers-with-air-bursts/
