Chinese engineers are working on a highly unusual aircraft design that traces its roots back to the 1970s. The design is based on the “scissor wing,” also called an oblique rotating wing. Unlike regular planes that keep their wings fixed or adjust both sides symmetrically, this new aircraft would rotate a single large wing diagonally across its body.
The idea is simple in theory but extremely hard in practice. At low speeds, the wing sits across the plane like a normal aircraft, helping it lift off and fly smoothly. As the speed increases, the wing starts to pivot, moving diagonally at Mach 1 to reduce drag and stabilize airflow. At the fastest speeds, reaching Mach 5, the wing aligns completely with the fuselage, blending into the body and turning the aircraft into a sleek “waverider.”
This design is not new. Similar ideas were tested decades ago but failed because of poor handling and severe stability issues. Yet, with new technology, the concept has been brought back, this time with a far more ambitious purpose: creating a hypersonic mother ship that can release combat drones.
Hypersonic Mother Ship with Drone Swarm
The proposed aircraft is designed to fly at five times the speed of sound, near the edge of space, about 30 kilometers above the ground. It is unstaffed, meaning it operates without human pilots, and runs fully on autonomous control.
The aircraft is described as a drone carrier, capable of carrying around 2,000 kilograms of payload. This allows it to deploy 16 to 18 smaller drones mid-flight. These drones could be released from bay doors at the bottom of the mother ship and then spread out in swarms.
Each of these drones would be designed for high speed and independent operations. Once released, they could target critical sites like radar systems, communication hubs, or command centers before defenses have time to react. After deployment, the mothership is built to return to base and land without human intervention.
The design combines several aerodynamic tricks to make this possible. At lower speeds, the wing provides lift for smooth take-offs. At transonic speeds, the angled wing reduces shock waves and drag, keeping the plane balanced. At hypersonic speeds, the fuselage itself creates most of the lift, with the canards at the nose and the tail surfaces balancing the rest. This balance makes the plane efficient across all stages of flight, something that traditional designs struggle with.
Enormous Engineering Challenges
While the design looks promising on paper, the technical hurdles are massive. The most critical part is the wing pivot shaft — a single hinge that connects the rotating wing to the body of the plane. This hinge must withstand enormous forces. At Mach 5, the wing is exposed to extreme bending, torque, and pressure that could push conventional materials to their limits.
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Heat is another huge challenge. At such high speeds, leading edges of the wing can heat up to over 1,000 degrees Celsius, while the shaft inside the fuselage remains far cooler. This difference causes parts of the structure to expand at different rates, creating dangerous stress points. Lubrication inside the pivot system can also fail, risking the wing getting stuck mid-flight.
Fatigue adds another layer of difficulty. Each flight cycle puts the hinge and wing through repeated stress, increasing the risk of tiny cracks forming over time. If these cracks spread, they could compromise the entire aircraft. Engineers suggest that multiple backup systems, real-time monitoring, and emergency locking mechanisms would be necessary to avoid catastrophic failure.
Despite these risks, the design has certain advantages. Unlike traditional variable-sweep wings that are heavy and full of moving parts, the oblique wing is one solid piece. This makes it stronger and potentially less complex to maintain. With modern tools like advanced computer simulations, artificial intelligence, and smart materials, engineers believe many of the earlier weaknesses can now be managed.
The oblique wing was once considered too radical and unstable to ever succeed. Now, it is being revived on a much larger and more dangerous scale, with the goal of turning it into a hypersonic war machine capable of carrying and releasing swarms of drones.