A 767-sized airplane with up to 50 percent better fuel efficiency than current air transports might be of great interest to airlines and the Air Force – if it works as advertised and truly suits its potential roles.
JetZero, a Long Beach, CA startup, grabbed headlines last week with news of $235 million in funding from the U.S. Air Force via the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). The money will go to the building and flying of a blended-wing-body (BWB) demonstrator which the USAF wants to evaluate first as a potential commercial air transport and second as a possible aerial refueling tanker or freighter along the lines of the KC-46.
Looking at an artist’s rendering of a possible JetZero demonstrator suggests an exciting, futuristic design precedent for fuel efficient airframes. But there’s some difficult ground to cover before JetZero’s, or anyone else’s, BWB aircraft takes off.
In this case, it starts with the simple fact that the Air Force/DIU award will not be enough to cover the development and production of even a single full-scale prototype. JetZero CEO, Tom O’Leary, told Fortune that the balance of funding it will need will come from private investment without specifying those investors.
DIU must have confidence that the funding is in place (or at least on tap) otherwise it would not have proceeded with its engagement in the project. But funding will be a factor in JetZero’s schedule which the company says will see the demonstrator (which it calls Z-5) roll out in the final quarter of 2026 before a first-quarter 2027 flight.
That flight will see a 767-sized BWB prototype takeoff and demonstrate that it can fly with similar agility and assurance as a conventional tube-and-wing airliner or air tanker. The goal is to prove that it can deliver a 50 percent reduction in fuel consumption and emissions compared with conventional aircraft.
The projected fuel savings are no doubt attractive to both the airlines and the Air Force which faces its own fuel cost as well fuel range issues in the vast Indo-Pacific theater to which it is tilting its operational emphasis.
It’s important to note subtle distinctions however. Asked about the 50 percent projected improvement, JetZero’s CEO says, “If you’re comparing it to a KC-46, yes it will have double the [fuel] offload or double the range, take your pick.”
That projection may pan out, but it doesn’t illuminate other possible comparisons. How the Z-5 may stack up against upcoming variants of the latest generation of midsized conventional airliners (787, A350) with new, more efficient engines in the pipeline from GE and Pratt & Whitney isn’t clear.
It’s worth noting that Airbus is working on its own BWB demonstrator and has flown a small-scale model with a design that looks similar to JetZero’s Z-5. The European airframer projects that its full-scale BWB design “could generate up to 20 percent fuel savings” (remember that number). That’s a big difference in expected efficiency returns. What variation in the two designs (aside from vertical control surfaces above the Airbus’ BWB nacelles) would account for it is tough to figure.
Blended wing body aircraft are not new. The idea of blending wing and body structures, thereby reducing wetted area and the accompanying form drag, emerged in the early 1920s. The Westland Dreadnought was the first BWB design to fly (it crashed on its first flight), followed by further studies in the 1930s and protoypes in the 1940s including the McDonnell XP-67.
NASA and McDonnell Douglas revisited the concept in the 1990s, building and flying a subscale prototype followed a decade later by a remotely controlled research model (X-48B) with a 21-foot wingspan. JetZero’s co-founder, Mark Page, and senior technical principals Bob Liebeck and Blaine Rawdon were involved in these projects which generated significant anticipation the company’s CEO says.
“People love this airframe. People have been anticipating it being the future of aviation for some time now because of the efficiency benefits that the airplane will provide.”
They’ve also been aware of the potential shortcomings of BWB designs. Boeing
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In 2018, Boeing’s VP of product and future airplane development, Mike Sinnett, explained that a BWBs’ efficiencies only come into play at longer ranges where fuel savings offset the weight and large wingspan drawbacks that come with such designs, limiting them to large aircraft.
The economics of short to medium haul missions don’t work for BWBs in Boeing’s view, leaving aside a huge segment of the commercial transport market. At the time, Sinnett added that Boeing’s studies had only shown a few cases in which BWB economics/fuel savings were better than 20 percent.
JetZero will have to prove that it has greatly bumped-up fuel efficiency and its demonstrator’s 767-size indicates it will attempt to do so with a large airplane as Boeing forecast. That raises the prospect that its benefits will only be realized on long flight segments, limiting potential applications.
The company name is not surprisingly meant to allude to the potential lower emissions such an aircraft might yield in operation, a marketing nod to the climate fervor the current administration, the Air Force, and others have latched onto without providing scientific proof that decarbonization will have a positive effect.
The renowned experimental aircraft builder, Scaled Composites, will take on construction of the demonstrator for JetZero which has also partnered with Pratt & Whitney for the BWB’s propulsion system. The Z-5 will fly with a pair of Pratt’s GTF geared turbofans which the engine-maker claims achieve 20 percent fuel savings per trip compared with non-GTF powered transports.
Northrop-Grumman is also a notable partner with JetZero, if mostly a background one for now. The company’s experience with similar flying wing designs (from the 1940s N-9M and YB-49 to the more recent B-2 and B-21) could be of value to JetZero. O’Leary says his company will lean on Northrop for “a mountain of technical expertise” in flight controls for a tail-less aircraft and for production of all-composite flying-wing type airplane.
He says Northrop “is scoping, designing and delivering any mission systems that the Air Force may [eventually] want and need.” O’Leary also suggests the defense prime has corollary interest.
“You can imagine being involved from Northrop’s perspective. They don’t currently have an aircraft … they don’t have a tanker or a transport. So, to be able to get a nose into this market with an airframe that fits this need made sense…”
Among the aspects of JetZero’s demonstration project for the Air Force and DIU are what it will not do. Stories reporting the investment (including one in Air Force Times) have speculated on the possible stealth and airlifter-like capabilities of the aircraft. But O’Leary says stealth is not a “primary driver” of the design.
“It’s something we’re not playing-up. It’s not a survivable or stealth airframe,” he adds, noting that it is not meant to get into contested environments.
Nor is it meant to serve as a strategic airlifter like the Air Force’s C-17 or C-5 given its dimensionally flatter fuselage and lack of rear-loading capability. It might step into the tactical airlifter roles undertaken with such versatility by the C-130 – it can handle anything on a 463L cargo pallet O’Leary affirms.
Its size and runway requirements will have a say in its military application and to a lesser extent in the commercial market. Despite its expected long wingspan, O’Leary says a future production BWB will have a “better footprint” than existing Air Force tankers. “How you can stack these airplanes together works a little better than tube-and-wing [aircraft].”
While that remains to be seen, the question of how produce-able an all-composite BWB airplane such as JetZero wants to build is also out there. Looking for ways to improve composite airframe/parts production rates is a top goal for the company and one it will turn to Northrop-Grumman for assistance with.
And the composite construction begs the question of what JetZero’s BWB airplane might eventually cost the Air Force or the airlines? The USAF in particular is looking for cost efficient solutions just to add tails to its ever-shrinking fleet.
It’s “a little early for us to be talking price,” O’Leary says with justification. He does allow that he thinks the cost of the airframe will not be “prohibitive”.
“When you look at what these platforms cost and cost to maintain for the Air Force, we think we can drive some economies there.”
That may hold for the poorly managed KC-46 but any comparisons to the 50-plus year-old KC-135 are largely irrelevant.
The Air Force would surely like to see it succeed though it’s notable that Maj. Gen. Albert Miller, Air Mobility Command’s director for strategy and plans, cautioned against viewing the jet as the sole solution for the Air Force’s next-generation airlift and air refueling programs.
With a staff of 75 and undeniably interesting intellectual property, JetZero has come quite a distance in the short span since its founding in 2021 but its blended wing body has a lot to prove.
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