Lockheed Spent Years Designing the X-44 Manta as a Tailless F-22 in 1999 — It Never Flew, But Its Design May Have Inspired the F-47

Lockheed Spent Years Designing the X-44 Manta as a Tailless F-22 in 1999 — It Never Flew, But Its Design May Have Inspired the F-47

In 1999, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works designed the X-44 Manta — a “Multi-Axis, No Tail Aircraft” built on the F-22 Raptor fuselage with a large delta wing and advanced thrust-vectoring nozzles intended to replace the traditional tailplane for flight control. The program was canceled around 2000 before any aircraft was built, and the X-44 Manta never flew. But more than 25 years later, U.S. Air Force renderings of the new Boeing F-47 NGAD sixth-…