Air Force Research Lab scientists have finished wind tunnel testing of an “adaptive compliant wing,” a flexible wing that can change shape during flight. Next up for the technology being developed by Michigan-based FlexSys, Inc. is a flight test this month aboard Scaled Composites’ White Knight aircraft. Researchers expect the flight tests to provide much colder temperatures and a different flow measurement for the flexible wing technology, which AFRL expects to employ on a future concept vehicle—the SensorCraft—for high-altitude, long endurance surveillance.
Happy Birthday US Air Force: 78 Today
Sept. 18, 2025
Seventy-eight years ago today, on Sept. 18, 1947, Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson swore in Stuart Symington as the first ever Secretary of the Air Force, and the Air Force officially became the first new military service since the Revolutionary War.