Starting with my personal favorite, and the one depicted on the featured image, variable sweep wings. Aircraft much like the Panavia Tornadoes, American Aardvark, F-14 Tomcat, and the B-1B Lancer. These aircraft are incredibly hard to design and manufacture because even the slightest malfunction or miscalculation incredibly dangerous. These types of wings are designed to slowly change between unswept (extended) and swept (pulled in towards the body). Unswept wings are meant for maneuvering, slow speeds, and landings, while swept wings are meant for high speeds often exceeding supersonic speeds. I personally find the idea of variable wing sweeping incredibly fascinating and such a cool idea. It’s like having a swept wing aircraft and a delta wing aircraft all in one, I’ll talk about those in future posts.
An example of the F-14 Tomcat with both swept and unswept wings.
