Wing Morphing

Wing Morphing Technology
-Flight performance enhancing technology.-

Background Information:
Wing Morphing technology originally appeared in Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere. Neucom aircraft designers utilized wing morphing in the R series of airplanes to enable them to be lightweight, maneuverable and fast while not depending on thrust vectoring and add on control surfaces as General Resources planes and UPEO planes have done.

Traditional wings are designs of compromise, hence the need for additional control surfaces on the wing such as flaps and slats to make a wing more suited to a broader range of speeds and situations. Problem with traditional control surfaces is that they add weight, complexity and that they cannot change the core shape of the wing. Wing morphing technology addresses the problems of tailoring a wing to suit take off and landing (low speed), supersonic (high speed), combat maneuvering (unstable) and straight line flying (stable) by changing the shape of the wing to what is aerodynamically optimum.

Some of the advantages of wing morphing technology over traditional control surfaces are:
*Lighter weight: Lessens need for other control surfaces like canards and thrust vectoring, also gives benefits in acceleration.
*Increased Maneuverability: Precise control of wing surface means that optimum wing shape can be achieved for various situations.
*Better speed: The wing can match itself to the required speed range(lessens trim drag), think of it as advanced swing wing technology. Also airflow on the wing isn't disturbed when a control surface is moved rather,air moves smoothly over the whole wing.
*Better stealth: Each deflection of traditional control surfaces serves to break up the stealthy shape of a craft by exposing the control surfaces to radar. With wing morphing, the radar reflecting shape of the craft isn't disturbed because the wing moves as a whole.

-R-102 wing profile-
Note the the seamless wing unmarred by any control surfaces. The wing is at full deflection pushing the nose of the craft up.

-R-103 nose canards-
Canards bend left or right to provide additional directional control when the rudder is used.

Real World Parallels:

NASA with the help of the Air Force Research Laboratory and Boeing have modified a F/A-18A into the X-53 to test aerolastic technology. Though not as advanced as wing morphing technology the aerolastic wing provides a convenient stepping stone for the future.
Wing Morphing technology is a more advanced derivative of the Active Aerolastic Wing in evelopment at NASA, the active aerolastic wing uses leading and trailing edge control surfaces on the wing to induce aerodynamic forces that "twist" the wing to the desired shape.

TheRoboSwift has been designed with the characteristics of the swift bird in mind and provides superior performance compared to other UAV's in its size range.

Notable Aircraft Equipped with wing morphing technology:
R-101 (probably uses aerolastic wing since a traditional control surface is used)
R-102
R-103
R-201
R-211
R-311
R-501
R-531
X-49 Night Raven (AC3) (unconfirmed)
XR-900 Geopelia (AC3) (unconfirmed)

SOURCE(S):
NASA

Note:
The visual representation of wing morphing was supposed to be more detailed in the game, sadly due to the limits of the PSX hardware it was not that detailed. All the more reason for an ac3 remake if you ask me.

Interestingly Production IG loves Bio inspired designs, check out this page for more examples.