Rigid control surface aircraft

[McColm]

In the world of stealth, if you did away with all the controlled surfaces an aircraft or drone. The enemy would have far less a chance of detecting you on radar, but you'd need some of of propulsion system unless you were piloting a glider or hand glider.
I might be wrong but the Boeing Bird of Prey is the only aircraft that I know (I'll have to check on that) that flew without any controlled surfaces.
Are there any others?

[PR19_Kit]

The Wright Flyer did away with ailerons, it had warping wings instead..........

[Snowtrooper]

The Bird of Prey did have control surfaces, you must be confusing it with Lockheed-Martin's F-22 derivative X-44 MANTA, which was purely a paper project...

...or was it? dun dun dun dun...

[McColm]

Thanks Guys,
I suppose take off and landing would cause problems for the pilot but once in the air it would be very agile.

[Weaver]

The problem with using reaction jets and thrust-vectoring as your only means of control is that, in the event of a total engine failure, you lose all control authority too, and have no choice but to eject. mind you, that might be an acceptable risk for an aircraft on a very high value mission. You might also see it on drones in the future where there isn't a squishy meat-sack with a family to worry about.

More likely would be lockable control surfaces. The control surfaces don't normally move and are locked, and maybe semi-retracted, so that they produce the minimum of RCS retrun, but in an emergency they can be unlocked and the aircraft flown normally.

Somebody (Grumman?) ran a project for NASA/DARPA in the '80s called the Mission-Adaptive Wing. It was basically updated wing-warping: the wing had a flexible carbon-fibre skin and was warped by internal actuators. The test aircraft was an F-111.

[McColm]

Researchers at BAE Systems and the University of Manchester have successfully test flown an experimental UAV - the Magma with no moving control surfaces back in December 2017.
The wing circulation control takes air from the engine and blows it supersonically through the trailing edge of the wing to provide control.
Fluidic thrust vectoring uses blown air to deflect the exhaust, allowing the direction of the aircraft to be changed.
BAE Systems has tried this before back in 2010 with the test drone Demon.

[Weaver]

It makes a lot of sense for a drone because you can control the reaction jets centrally using solenoid valves and/or stepper motors, which are a natural pairing with a computer control system, rather than having control rods/cables/wires/pipes running all over the airframe. probably helps with mass centralization too: you get less mass out on the wings if your roll control is a pipe full of air with an valve in the fuselage than if it's an actuator out near the wingtip with a pipe full of hydraulic fluid running to it.

[PR19_Kit]

If nothing else, it'll make our job here building models of futuristic aircraft easier, as with composite construction as well there won't be a need for ANY panel line rescribing! 

[Caveman]

IIRC Taranis is believed to change how it's controls operate to reduce its RCS when required. This is done at the expense of manoeuvrability. But in situations where the largest control effects are required (landing/take-off) stealth is less important.

[scooter]

If nothing else, it'll make our job here building models of futuristic aircraft easier, as with composite construction as well there won't be a need for ANY panel line rescribing! 

Just have to make sure the wrench turners sand off the sprue points during construction.