In Washington, D.C., a Ryan company pilot takes off vertically from a street in front of the Pentagon in the Ryan X-13 Vertijet VTOL research aircraft, transitions to horizontal flight, retraces the route that Orville Wright and Lt. Benjamin Foulois made on the final acceptance flight of the 1909 Military Flyer, and returns for a vertical landing.
The KC-Z4, a blended wing body tanker concept being developed by startup JetZero, could fuel larger groups of aircraft at longer range to hold more targets at risk, company officials say.