HiMAT

HiMAT was a Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology demonstrator, the second of two built, designed to test technologies intended to improve the maneuverability of future U.S. fighters. NASA, the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory, and Rockwell International developed it jointly. It was a remotely piloted research vehicle flown from a ground cockpit to reduce the costs and risks inherent in flight testing with full-scale, manned aircraft, and an on-board television camera gave the pilot forward vision. Swept wings, a digital fight control system, winglets, and canards gave HiMAT a turning radius nearly half that of conventional U.S. fighters. Without a pilot and with enhanced structural strength, it was capable of making sustained 8g turns at Mach 0.9. It was air-launched from the B-52 mothership and landed on Rogers Dry Lake, and the two aircraft made twenty-six flights between mid-1979 and January 1983.

California · United States