If You Need to Incorporate Stealth into a Transport Aircraft

Then maybe you have a problem like lack of air superiority over your airfields, which pretty much means "game over".

This makes me wonder why the USAF is soliciting proposals from Boeing and Northrop-Grumman for stealthy STOL airlifters.

My guess is that this is a way to get additional money for a successor to the B-2 bomber through a back door, because there ain't any money in the front door.

Obviously, this is technically challenging, if just because tailless designs do not lend themselves to short take-off and landing and the slow speeds that this entails.

The basic requirement, the ability to operate from a a 1,500-2,000ft landing strip and cruise at Mach 0.80 is doable, and has been done, even at the size that they are looking at, a 35T payload, roughly equivalent to an EADS A400M, which comes close to these goals...Or it will when it finally flies.

Clearly, the two proposals differ, with Boeing going with a tail, and they will rely heavily on things like blown flaps, and perhaps some application of the Coandă effect.

Boeing Concept


Northrop-Grumman Concept


STOL Technologies from Northrop-Grumman