China’s flying wing stealth transport drone FL-2 makes its debut

At the end of September 2019, at Xi’an Qujiang International Convention and Exhibition Center, Zhongtian Yinkong Technology Co., Ltd. exhibited a FL-2 flying wing stealth transport drone, which attracted great attention from the audience and media.

FL-2 drone is a typical wing body combining flying wing layout and conventional layout. It has a streamlined transitional wide body with two backpacks arranged above the head. And the rear of the fuselage also has a pair of “bat-type” swept wings, the entire trailing edge profile is w-shaped, the same shape as the US X-47B drone. The difference is that FL-2 is equipped with four ailerons on the swept wings, as well as two movable rudders on the rear edge of the fuselage. In addition, the FL-2 drone uses V-tail design of a conventional aircraft.

As we all know, the flying wing layout has the advantage of high aerodynamic efficiency, but the stability and maneuverability of flight has always been a difficult point in its design. The FL-2 drone combines flying wing layout with conventional layout design, and has a large number of pneumatic rudder surfaces, which significantly increases flight stability.

In addition, the flight control system of FL-2 UAV also adopts the stabilization design and redundancy configuration measures and strives to eliminate the single point failure mode, which greatly improves the system reliability while taking into account the cost.

FL-2 drone uses a large thrust turbofan engine with a maximum takeoff weight of 22,000 kg, a practical ceiling of 15 km, a cruising altitude of 10 to 12 km, a cruising speed of 600 to 780 km/h, and a maximum flight speed of 900 km/h, a maximum range of 7000 kilometers, a maximum flight time of 10 hours, and a usage radius of 1200 kilometers. These basic data are also very close to X-47B drone.

According to such information, FL-2 drone is a large-scale multi-tasking high-subsonic unmanned transport platform, which can have multiple cargo compartments inside, and can carry different types of cargo either flexibly or through simple adjustment, a single large cargo. Its unique aerodynamic layout design also reduces the resistance during cruise flight, so it’s very economical.