Much discussion and debate continue to surround a video said to have been taken near Area 51 that went viral after it was released last month. The footage shows an exotic aircraft that still looks likely to be a progenitor of Boeing’s F-47 sixth-generation fighter for the U.S. Air Force. Its apparent design, with a long shovel-like nose, large canards, and rear-set swept wings, is much different from the tailless, modified delta-winged heavy fighter that many were expecting to come out of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. This, in turn, raises interesting questions about why certain design decisions may have been made and the broader implications of the resulting tradeoffs.
The Project Fear YouTube channel posted the footage of the aircraft in question online back on June 5. Readers can find our initial assessment of the aircraft and its features here.
The full video from Project Fear can be viewed below. The clip of the mysterious aircraft passing by starts at around 49:34 in the runtime, if it does not automatically start playing at that point.
TWZ talked at length with Darold Cummings to more deeply analyze features of the design that appear to be visible in the video and, by extension, what might be inferred about the F-47. Cummings is an aerospace engineer with decades of experience who played a key role in developing Northrop’s YF-23 Black Widow, which lost out to what became Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor.
A screen capture that Project Fear had posted as a teaser before the release of the full video had also prompted new interest in another advanced fighter concept that Cummings had crafted in the 1980s. TWZ previously explored this design, nicknamed the “Christmas tree” because of its planform, in detail. Cummings has worked on a host of other projects over the years for other companies across the aerospace industry and is now president of his own firm, ForzAero. He has also previously shared his own notional concepts for what the F-47, as well as a navalized derivative, might look like.
We reached out to other experts and long-time observers to get their views on Project Fear’s footage and the F-47, as well. Olivier Vargas, a 3D artist who goes by the handle @ollysaerospace on X and Instagram, was also kind enough to share his artwork based on what could be seen in the Project Fear video, one of which is seen at the top of this story and others throughout it. These are just extrapolated artist impressions and should not be taken as literal.
There are also years’ worth of official artwork from Boeing and other U.S. companies, as well as the Air Force itself, depicting concepts for advanced fighters. These have largely revolved around tailless, modified delta-winged designs, a sampling of which is shown in the collage below.
A useful starting framework
Darold Cummings offered a valuable general rubric for considering advanced combat aircraft designs in his interview with TWZ.
When it comes to designing any fighter, “you just have a team of people who bring in all their needs. It’s like I say, the weapons, the landing gear, the wing, structure, and all the doors, all that stuff comes together,” he explained. “And all those people have to say, ‘what is the best I can do to get the [radar] cross-sectional area down?’ How can I move the landing gear to get the cross-sectional area down? How can I make the weapons bay smaller to get the cross-sectional area down? And all that relates to fineness ratio, and all that relates to the Sears-Haack plot.”
Fineness ratio refers to the ratio of the length of a ‘body,’ such as an aircraft, to its maximum width. The ratio increases the longer and narrower the body is. The Concorde supersonic airliner, with its long, slender fuselage and relatively short wingspan, is a common example of a plane with a very high fineness ratio.
A Sears-Haack plot, or Sears-Haack body, is a shape offering the lowest theoretical drag while traveling at supersonic speed based on a set length and volume. In high-speed aircraft development, the goal then is to devise a planform that is as close to that plot as possible.
“We spent probably a whole year on the Sears-Haack plot on the YF-23,” Cummings recalled. “I remember the structures guy wanted to have me fired because I had to have such [a] thin structure there to get the area down. He wanted to have me tar-and-feathered [sic].”
As noted, the tailless design seen in Project Fear’s video appears to have rear-set swept wings, as well as rhombus-shaped canard foreplanes. From the teaser image that Project Fear released, it had initially appeared that the nose might also have something of a “double arrowhead” shape akin to Cummings’ Christmas tree concept. However, the full video looks to show a more shovel-like forward fuselage more typically found on low-observable (stealthy) aircraft. Even without the double arrowhead nose, the planform is distinct and notable.
Wings
The wings on the aircraft seen in Project Fear’s footage look to have a significant dihedral, and possibly drooping tips. At the same time, the relative quality of the video, given how far away the subject was, as well as the fact that it was captured in infrared at night, makes it hard to say definitively.
The design has already evoked the memory of Boeing’s Bird of Prey advanced technology demonstrator aircraft, which is understood to have been tested at Area 51 in the 1990s, but was only revealed to the public in 2002. This wing shape would also be in line, broadly speaking, with the renderings of the F-47 that the Air Force has released to date, which also shows the wings have a positive dihedral, though those may not fully reflect the actual design for operational security reasons.
“Now, whether that has the gull wing, up/down, like the Bird of Prey, I can’t tell,” Cummings told us. “I would be surprised if they had the droop [sic] wingtips, like on the Bird of Prey.”
“They’re a little hard to do once you have landing gear in that, because the inboard section would have to have a lot of dihedral to it, and I don’t know what you’re gaining,” he explained.
“Now, that’s not saying that the Bird of Prey doesn’t work. It works. I’m just saying, for simplicity’s sake, and long straight edges,” using “a clipped delta wing with MANTA-type exhaust, to me would be the best solution,” he added, speaking broadly. “Long straight edges for LO [low observability; stealthiness] are the best, no matter what you do. The longer the edges, the better RCS [radar cross section] you have in terms of the types of radars that use – the shorter it is, kind of the worse it is. So, if you can have a nice long straight leading edge and a relatively long straight trailing edge, combined with 3D thrust vectoring, in my opinion, it just doesn’t get much better than that.”
MANTA here refers to the Multi-Axis No-Tail Aircraft (MANTA), a Lockheed design derived from the F-22, which is also known by the designation X-44A. The MANTA never came to be, at least that we know. The designation was later re-applied to a completely unrelated flying wing-type drone, the existence of which was first reported by TWZ.
Cummings also highlighted the stealth advantages, in general, of choosing a tailless planform.
“There’s no intersections. Every time you have an intersection, you have a chance for an RCS reflector. I mean, anytime you have an angle, you have a chance for a reflector. So, if you do [it] with a way without any tails, mostly vertical tails – you can use a horizontal tail like we did on a YF-23, a V-Tail, if you keep it ported, lined up with a wing,” he explained. “You can see that there’s no gap between the wing and the tail [on the YF-23], and if you look at the angles from above, they’re exactly the same. To me, that’s a really ideal configuration. But if you can eliminate the tails completely by using thrust factoring, even better.”
“Ported” in this case means keeping the control surface locked in the same geometric plane as the wing while cruising.
In terms of wing shaping, “ideally it would be the old Dorito chip,” Cummings said, speaking generally. “Remember the ‘Hopeless Diamond,’ the original [Lockheed’s Have Blue demonstrator that evolved into the F-117]? I mean, that would be the optimum shape, but that’s very poor aerodynamically, very poor – very hard to balance, very hard to control.”
“You have a very, very high sweep, very, very long edge, you know, followed up by an angular [sic] on the back, which is less of a threat area. With a nice angled cut off on the back. If you can make it fly,” he continued.
The overall planform does look well-suited to cruising at supersonic speeds. This would be in line with the F-47 being originally envisioned primarily as a replacement for the F-22 Raptor, though that view has since shifted, at least publicly. Supercruise is a signature capability of the F-22.
A combination of high dihedral and drooping tips can be potentially beneficial for supersonic flight, gaining performance from riding on the resulting compression wave. However, Cummings said he did not think this would be applicable in the discussion around the potential design of the F-47.
“You really, in my opinion, need to be going more like Mach 3 to really take advantage of that, and this airplane, I’d be surprised if it did more than Mach 2.2,” he said. “Like the Bird of Prey, it was subsonic. I mean, there was no reason at all, from an aero-lift standpoint, to do it that way, from an aero-lift standpoint. There might be some advantage from an RCS standpoint, but not from an aero-lift standpoint.”
Cummings used the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, which had wingtips that could be canted down into a drooped position during flight, as an example of an aircraft that does benefit from this feature when it comes to aero-lift. The XB-70 was designed to fly at speeds above Mach 3.
There is the possibility that what looks like ‘droop’ in the wingtips of the design seen in the video Project Fear released could actually depict wingtips that articulate. We cannot say with certainty one way or the other at this time. China’s J-XDS heavy sixth-generation stealth fighter notably has swiveling wingtips, which could help provide critical stability at slower speeds and during hard maneuvering, which are especially sensitive areas of the flight envelope for tailless designs.
Fuel capacity will also be a major factor in the design of the wing. A tailless delta-winged aircraft could offer greater fuel capacity compared to what is seen in the Project Fear video. Significant unrefueled range has long been expected to be a major requirement for the F-47, which we will come back to later on.
For its part, in May 2025, the Air Force released a graphic with unclassified details about its current and future fighter fleets, which listed the F-47’s top speed as “Mach 2+” and put its combat radius at “1,000+” nautical miles. While this is greater than that of any other fighter in the USAF’s inventory by a relatively sizable margin, it is not what one would expect from a heavy tailless delta, so this makes some sense considering the F-47’s unique planform.
Canards
The presence of canards has been a hot topic of discussion surrounding the F-47, even before Project Fear released its video. Canards were a feature that was visible in one of the official renderings released back in March 2025, and that came as a surprise to many.
Canards do provide additional maneuverability and stability, especially for a delta-wing aircraft, and at high angles of attack. Traditional vertical tails also help with stabilization, so canards could offer further benefits when used in tailless designs. However, they have historically been less than ideal for low observable designs, especially from the frontal aspect, which is of critical importance for the survivability of tactical jets flying into harm’s way. TWZ explored all of this in detail at the time.
The presence of canards in the F-47 rendering, and now on the design in the Project Fear footage said to have been taken near Area 51, together with the rest of what can be seen of their planforms, has also recalled the design of the X-36 uncrewed demonstrator. Also known as the Tailless Fighter Agility Research Aircraft, this X-plane was developed by Boeing’s Phantom Works advanced projects division, and you can learn more about it here.
“I’ve always liked the X-36. I always thought that was a great place to start if you’re going to have a canard airplane,” Darold Cummings told us. “The X-36 had yaw thrust vectoring, so they eliminated the vertical tails, which was really fantastic. So, yeah, I think X-36 would be a good place to start.”
“I suspect the wing would probably be either level or maybe minus two degrees, and the canard would probably be plus 10 degrees,” he added when asked about whether the F-47’s canards might have the same dihedral as the main wings.
“You need that type of separation to really have the canard be extremely effective throughout the envelope of the airplane. In fact, if you look at the Chinese J-20, I think that’s about exactly what the J-20 use[s],” he explained, noting that this kind of configuration is called a “close couple.”
“Now, if you’re widespread, you might be less than that, but if you’re close coupled, I would say, plus 10 on the canard, minus two to three on the wing, would be about optimum,” he added.
The degree to which the canards on the F-47 or the design seen in the Project Fear video might be able to articulate is not clear. The canards on the J-20 and many other existing designs have a wide range of motion up and down, and can deflect asymmetrically.
“The original LockMart [Lockheed Martin] design for CALF [the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter], pre-JSF [Joint Strike Fighter], was a canard,” Bill Sweetman, a long-time Aviation Journalist, also told TWZ. “You might want to lock the foreplane in cruise to avoid gaps, but all very doable. The key is to maintain the edge alignments.”
CALF was merged with the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) effort in the early 1990s to create the JSF program, which led to the F-35. CALF had also evolved from an earlier Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) efforts called Advanced Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing (ASTOVL) and STOVL Strike Fighter (SSF), which began in the 1980s.
“As for range – might be a toss-up. A delta [wing] gives you huge capacity but a lot of wetted area, and a canard might trim differently in the cruise,” Sweetman also noted, highlighting a potential link between decisions relating to the wing design and canards.
As mentioned earlier, the still image that Project Fear released had also raised the possibility of the design having not just canards, but a “double-arrowhead” configuration. This sparked new interest in Cummings’ “Christmas Tree” fighter concept, also known as the DP-21. From what is visible in the full video, it seems less likely now that the aircraft has this kind of configuration.
“The only advantage of the Christmas Tree design, the only advantage, is it’s a four-spike design,” Cummings said. “No one, to my knowledge, no one in the history of aerospace has made a four-spike fighter.”
It would be “pretty much invisible to radar, as a four-spike airplane,” he added. “In my opinion, it would be a true breakthrough, because it’s never been done.”
As TWZ has previously explained:
“A four-spike design like the B-2 critically has nothing from the head-on aspect, as well as from the rear, which helps immensely with survivability. These are the most critical signature areas, especially the front as the aircraft is heading into hostile territory. Also, because these are located along the path of flight, these spikes can stay consistent on a threat radar as the aircraft moves directly toward or away from the sensor, and are not fleeting in nature like those from the side. So a four-spike aircraft would be very attractive for a tactical fighter meant to persist in contested territory.”
As an aside, Cummings also talked about the value of a canard configuration for a carrier-based fighter, something we have also touched on in the past. Boeing is also in the running to build a sixth-generation fighter for the U.S. Navy, commonly referred to as F/A-XX. The company has released a rendering of its submission to that competition, which shows distinct similarities to the official concept art of the F-47 that has been released to date.
When it comes to a navalized design, canards would be beneficial “mostly for control in landing, and really good control at takeoff,” Cummings said. “If you do it right, you can use the canard in conjunction with thrust vectoring to get everything to do positive lift instead of the wing. You got a wing now that’s giving you pitch-down moment, and now you got a canard giving you pitch-up moment to counter it. So you get the kind of moments you need to get off quickly off the airplane [sic; aircraft carrier] and land in a very, very good aerodynamic situation.”
“Let’s put it this way, we did this same kind of layout on the YF-23, and it worked. Believe it or not, we had a canard version of YF-23. Most people don’t know that, but we actually did, and that was for the Navy, for the same exact reason,” he noted.
Weapons bays
Project Fear’s video does not offer any clues as to the configuration of any weapons bays on the design said to have been spotted near Area 51 or the F-47. However, Cummings spent considerable time in the interview highlighting how these internal bays influence the rest of any fighter design.
“Every fighter design is driven around the weapon bay, period. What weapons do you take? How big are they? How long are they? And you design from the inside out,” he told us. “So, then the question becomes, what can I do to wrap this in an airframe that’s really, really good aerodynamically, and really, really good from an RCS standpoint.”
“There’s really two separate issues there. The wing really has very little to do with the actual weapons bay itself. That weapons bay, the airplane’s laid out around the weapons bay, and then the area plot is laid out around the weapons bay and the wing integration,” he continued. “Those things together have to have a nice, beautiful, smooth, Sears-Haack plot. And that’s really hard to do, by the way, it’s really hard to do.”
“Everything wants to be in the CG [center of gravity],” Cummings added. “The wing[‘s] maximum thickness, the weapons bay, the inlet, and the landing gear, they all want to be in the same place where you want the least amount of cross-sectional area. And yet they’re all there, and nobody wants to give anything.”
“The thing that would work the best was [sic] if you had really small diameter weapons,” in Cummings’ opinion. “That would be good, because then you could really tighten everything, because you can’t do anything about landing gear size. It’s very difficult to do anything about inlet size. It’s very difficult to do anything about wing thickness.
“About the only area where you can make any headway is if somehow you could get smaller diameter weapons, or like that new Peregrine weapon,” he added.
Peregine is an air-to-air missile concept that Raytheon first unveiled back in 2019. It is a truncated derivative of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), as you can read more about here. Other companies have put forward compact air-to-air and air-to-surface munitions over the years, as well, for exactly the reasons Cummings highlighted. TWZ has also long called attention to the value smaller air-launched weapon designs could offer in terms of magazine depth, especially for internal carriage on stealthy aircraft.
There has been a particular surge in the development of more compact (and lower-cost) air-launched munitions recently, with designs that are increasingly blurring the line between traditional missiles and long-range kamikaze drones. Though the initial focus has been on air-to-surface applications, there is also explicit interest in extending these developments into the air-to-air realm.
“To me, the biggest improvement, the way to get the area down, is if you could put the Peregrine weapon in,” he said. “Then you could slim the weapons bay down. … That would be a home run.”
The new AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile (JATM), a joint development effort by the U.S. Navy and Air Force, is also interesting to consider in the context of slimming weapons bays down. A core requirement for the AIM-260 was to have roughly the same form factor as the AIM-120. However, JATM’s only control surfaces are four small fins at the tail, making it narrower than the AMRAAM. The AIM-120 has fins around the middle of the body, as well as at the tail end of the missile. AMRAAM variants have also been developed with mid-body fins with clipped tips, a change originally driven by the constraints of the F-22’s internal bays.
Weaponry may be something of a wild card when it comes to the F-47 due to a new factor in the equation: Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and other similar loyal wingman-type drones. Acting as quarterbacks for uncrewed aircraft will be a key role for the Air Force’s new sixth-generation fighters. The service’s future CCA fleets will be armed, at least for air-to-air combat, right from the start.
CCAs will open up new operational possibilities that might allow for the F-47’s organic weapons load to be kept more limited, with drones providing the additional magazine depth. It might be possible then to truncate the F-47’s overall design, or optimize it differently, including for higher performance and lower cost, by limiting its organic weapons carriage capacity.
TWZ previously touched on many of these points after the Air Force floated the idea of a new light fighter, potentially as an alternative to the combat jet component of the NGAD initiative, back in 2024. That came amid a deep review of the NGAD requirements, which called its future into question. The service ultimately decided to stick with its original plan, leading to the F-47.
At the same time, the F-47 is supposed to be a heavy-hitting, deep-penetrating fighter in an era where standoff weaponry, even for very stealthy aircraft, is also of increasing importance due to advanced in enemy air defenses. So we will have to wait and find out if weapons carriage capacity was exchanged for other advantages or if the F-47 will pack a major, outsized punch of its own.
Other design aspects
Project Fear’s video does not offer clear insights into a host of other features that would be important factors in the overall design of the plane seen therein, as well as future F-47. For instance, the shaping and location of the inlets are absolutely critical for safe and reliable engine function, and blending them with other aspects of a stealthy aircraft can be especially complicated. As Cummings noted, other essential components like the landing gear also have to be squeezed into the available volume, and trade-offs have to be made to accommodate everything that is necessary.
There are still questions about what engines the F-47 will use, even just initially. The Air Force has been pursuing so-called adaptive cycle designs through an adjacent effort known as the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program. General Electric and Pratt & Whitney have been working on competing designs, known as the XA102 and XA103, under NGAP.
In very general terms, adaptive jet engines have bypass ratios that can be adjusted on demand while in flight between modes optimized for fuel efficiency or power. With this kind of propulsion, a tactical jet like the F-47 could switch between higher and lower bypass modes as appropriate for general cruising, including transits to and from operating areas, and actual combat. This would help conserve fuel, as well as extend the aircraft’s range and loiter time. As TWZ has noted in the past, this could be particularly valuable in a future high-end fight against China in the Pacific, where tankers would be in high demand and under threat, and available bases could be few and far between.
The General Electric video below offers a general overview of adaptive cycle technology in relation to that company’s XA100 engine, which preceded its XA102 design.
“General Electric’s advanced programs lead, Harvey Maclin, was at the time [of the X-36’s development] talking about fluidic thrust vectoring — injecting air into an engine’s exhaust on one side or the other — as a solution that did not involve stealth-d