DARPA's X-65 CRANE Project Moves Closer To First Flight

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) says its experimental uncrewed X-65 has moved a step closer to its first flight, with its wings manufactured and ready to be assembled with the fuselage. On June 23, project partner Aurora Flight Sciences received the first wing set and has started integrating this with the rest of the aircraft. 

The test aircraft—which received its official X-65 designation in 2023—is part of DARPA’s Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program, launched in 2020. The wings of this particular aircraft are perhaps its most significant element as they are integral to its core test campaign: exploring how mechanical flight control surfaces can be replaced by blasts of air.

In January 2023, Aurora, which is a Boeing subsidiary, was chosen from four initial companies as the prime contractor to advance to the second phase of the project. Then in August 2025, Aurora reported it had finalized an agreement with DARPA to work jointly in the completion and first flight of the X-65.

The fuselage, wing assemblies, and engine diffuser have been manufactured at Aurora’s Bridgeport, West Virginia factory. In November, Aurora stated that it expected completion of the fuselage to be achieved January 2026, adding that propulsion and active flow control (AFC) components were awaiting integration.

Although DARPA and Aurora had previously stated in 2024 that the demonstrator had been set to start flight tests that summer, ground testing is now expected for late 2026, ahead of an anticipated first flight in 2027. The X-65 will ultimately be evaluated at speeds of up to Mach 0.7.

AFC itself is nothing new. However, CRANE program manager Richard Wlezein explained that with “significant advancements” made in the past several decades “that enable the integration of active flow control technologies into an advanced aircraft,” DARPA is “confident about completing the design and flight test of a demonstration aircraft with AFC as the primary design consideration.”

How Active Flow Control Works

According to DARPA, CRANE's goal is to evaluate and optimize the benefits of AFC. This, it explained, “could improve aircraft performance by removing jointed surfaces, which currently drive design configurations that increase weight and mechanical complexity.”

In practical terms, this means substituting traditional mechanical control surfaces such as flaps and rudders with strategically positioned jets of air. Instead of physically moving a control surface to control the aircraft’s roll, pitch and yaw, airflow inputs – channelled through an ‘effector’ - will achieve the control output.  

The X-65’s AFC system employs 14 effectors embedded across all flying surfaces. Aurora explained that the triangular-shaped wings enable active flow control testing across multiple sweeps, allowing it to trial varying degrees of swept-wing configurations. Although the X-65 will also be equipped with conventional control surfaces, these will be used for testing and evaluation purposes, as well as building up towards the full use of AFC effectors during flight envelope expansion.

Aurora completed wing tunnel testing using a 25% scale model back in 2022. During this campaign, the model combined 14 AFC banks with “eight fully independent controllable AFC air supply channels,” alongside eleven movable conventional control surfaces.

Should the technology succeed, AFC could remove the complexity of movable control surfaces from future aircraft. In 2022, senior director of Boeing research and technology, flight and vehicle technology Laurette Lahey, confirmed the technology could have “potential benefits to improve efficiency and performance for both commercial and military aircraft.” It could also be of benefit for potential military stealth configurations. Aurora stated its confidence that “future aircraft designs and research missions will be able to leverage the underlying technologies and flight test data.”

The modular outboard wings and AFC effectors are also designed to be swapped out in future configurations, allowing for potential testing of additional AFC designs, and prompting Aurora to decribe the aircraft as “an enduring flight test asset.” Wlezein noted in 2023 that what was then called the CRANE-X airplane has the potential to live on as a national test asset long after the CRANE program has concluded.