Foward Into the Future

The Air Force awarded Grumman a contract to construct two prototypes. Grumman assigned design number 712 to this new configuration, and began the detailed design work. It was conjectural whether this FSW would ever go into production. Just in case, though, Grumman designed hard points into the wing in order to hang various stores. Here is a concept drawing from 1979.



Both Rockwell and Grumman ran competitive advertisements in Aviation Week and Flight International. At this point in time, preliminary design was in an advanced stage.



The X-29A appeared at the Paris Air Show in 1985 as a static display. This ad appeared in Flight International.

FSW Wannabees...

Rockwell's entry in this competition was a brand new aircraft, the Sabrebat. Rockwell had won the previous HIMAT unmanned prototype aircraft contract, and hoped to succeed with this sleek design. The mockup appeared on the cover of Aviation Week.



General Dynamics based their design on an airframe that was already in production. This version of the F-16 had forward swept wings bolted on one of the YF prototypes.
Neither this, nor the Rockwell version made it past the design stage.

Grumman X-29A - 25th Anniversary

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the first flight of the Grumman X-29A. In the late 70's, DARPA initiated an industry contest to develop an X-plane to be built with a novel forward swept wing (FSW). The Air Force's Norris Krone wrote his Doctoral thesis on using composites to strengthen wings (especially forward swept wings). His analysis made it possible to build a strong and lightweight aircraft. Bidders in this contest included General Dynamics (with a FSW F-16), and Rockwell (Sabrebat). Grumman won the award, and built two prototypes. The first took off at Edwards Air Force base on December 14, 1984. Here is the CBS coverage of that historic event.