See the classified stealth aircraft the Pentagon developed in secret throughout US history

Still commonly referred to as “Black Programs,” the Pentagon has a long and illustrious history of funding the classified development of advanced technologies. Today, the most secretive efforts fall under what’s commonly referred to as “Special Access Programs,” or SAPs, for which the distribution of information is limited even among those with the highest-reaching security clearances. But even within the world of SAPs, there remains another, even murkier designation: Unacknowledged SAPs, or USAPs.

These efforts are so secretive that briefings are kept off paper and delivered by word of mouth only to the highest levels of government.

As we discussed in our in-depth coverage of the legend surrounding America’s seemingly mythical Aurora reconnaissance plane, many of these aircraft may never be revealed at all… But a few of these highly secret stealth aircraft have managed to peek out from behind the Black Budget veil, and some may have slipped beneath your radar since their disclosure.

Boeing’s Bird of Prey

On 13 January 1988, a joint team from McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics was awarded a development contract by the Navy for what was to become the A-12 Avenger II (not to be confused with Lockheed’s proposed A-12 of the 1960s). Once completed, the Navy’s A-12 would have been a flying-wing design reminiscent of Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit or B-21 Raider, though much smaller. The sharp triangular shape of the A-12 eventually earned it the nickname “the flying Dorito.”

The Navy planned to saddle the platform with an “A” prefix to demonstrate its use against ground targets despite actually having the ability to engage air targets with its two internally stored AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. In other words, the A-12 Avenger II would have been America’s first real stealth fighter.

By 1991, however, the A-12 was significantly overweight, over budget, and behind schedule, leading to its unceremonious cancellation.

Boeing’s Model 853-21 Quiet Bird

Like the Bird of Prey, the X-36 program wasn’t about fielding a new stealth aircraft for combat, so much as for maturing the technologies that may eventually find their way there.

Today’s stealth fighters are extremely difficult to target but are not very difficult to spot and track using even dated radar arrays. Because of the performance requirements of a fighter, jets like the F-35 and F-22 need components like large jet inlets and vertical tail surfaces; yet, these can be omitted from less aerobatic stealth aircraft like the B-2 Spirit. These components don’t compromise a stealth fighter’s low-observability against high-frequency targeting arrays but do so against low-frequency early-warning radars that aren’t capable of providing a target-grade lock.

In the mid-’90s, NASA and McDonnell Douglas (later Boeing) teamed up to try to bridge the gap between the stealth capabilities of flying-wing designs like the B-2 and aerobatic fighters like the F-22. Their X-36 was designed to fly without the empennage, or tail assembly, found on most fighters.

The X-36 was built to a 28-percent scale of a full-sized fighter, measuring just 19 feet long. It used a canard forward of the wing, split ailerons, and thrust vector control to help compensate for the missing tail. A pilot on the ground controlled the aircraft using a heads-up display connected to a nose-mounted camera.

The X-36 flew a total of 31 successful flights over just 25 weeks, racking up 15 hours and 38 minutes of flight time utilizing four different flight control software iterations.

While no subsequent aircraft has been directly linked to the X-36 program, it’s worth noting that nearly all official renders coming from the Air Force’s NGAD and the Navy’s F/A-XX fighter programs in development show stealth aircraft without conventional tail surfaces, suggesting the X-36’s legacy may simply still be shrouded in secrecy.

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