Lambda wing
Combat aircraft wing design
Lambda wing
A lambda wing is a wing whose trailing edge resembles the Greek uppercase letter lambda (Λ). A lambda wing has a dramatically smaller radar cross section than a delta wing, and so is commonly featured on stealth aircraft—for example, the Northrop B-2 Spirit and Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider. Like these strategic bombers, aircraft with lambda wings are often tailless. An early experiment with a lambda wing on smaller aircraft was the McDonnell Douglas X-36, which first flew in 1997. Similar designs have been used on unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), including the Boeing X-45, Northrop Grumman X-47B, Dassault nEUROn, and BAE Systems Taranis. The UK-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Air Programme considered but abandoned a lambda wing design. The wing is used in Lockheed Martin's "Vectis" proposal for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. In 2023, Beihang University researchers proposed moving wingtips as a solution to the wing’s aerodynamic instabilities, which caused the 2008 Andersen...
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