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This paper discusses the US Air Force/Bell Aircraft Corporation X-2 project which began in 1945. It was aimed at developing a research aircraft designed to reach speeds of over Mach 3 and altitudes over 100,000ft. A brief description of the aircraft is given along with a discussion of its flight test programme. The much-delayed project ended on 27 September 1956 during the aircraft's 13th powered flight. Loss of control at over Mach 3 led to violent motions characteristic of inertia roll coupling, following which both pilot and aircraft were lost. The paper concludes with an examination of the limited achievements of the project and lessons learned from it.

Recent forecasts have been that airline passenger traffic will almost triple by the year 2015 even if growth is less than the air transport industry's average of 5.5% over the last twenty years. This will lead to further increases in air traffic control system and airport congestion, forcing airlines to use larger aircraft than hitherto. Design teams on both sides of the Atlantic are working on concepts for ultra-high capacity airliners (UHCA) to satisfy the anticipated need. However, larger aircraft present major problems: taxiway and runway width limits, gate limits, passenger handling, emergency evacuation, community noise and aircraft separation due to wake vortices. Several different feasibility studies (occupying approximately 1,500 manhours each) have been carried out at the Royal Military College of Science into the design of UHCAs of broadly classical design. Each of the designs has been aimed at providing 600-700 tri-class seat/1000 economy seat transport aircraft.

The reduction or other control of an aircraft's radar, infrared, visual and acoustic signatures can greatly improve its survival, resulting in improved weapons' effectiveness. Although radar stealth is important, it is pointless without low observability in the other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, this paper, for reasons of brevity will concentrate on methods to control radar signature only. The topics of: benefits of signature control; contributions of an aircraft to its radar cross section (RCS); methods to reduce RCS; penalties/costs of RCS-reduction, in terms of performance, volume, weight and maintenance; use of radar absorbing and structural composite materials are addressed. The conclusion is that while signature control is important, there are penalties to be paid. RCS-reduction has become merely another factor to be considered in the series of compromises made during aircraft design trade-offs.

This paper deals with aspects of the British Aircraft Corporation TSR2 programme designed to produce for the Royal Air Force a supersonic low-level nuclear strike and reconnaissance aircraft for service entry in 1964. A short background to the project is given, together with a brief history of the progression of the programme. Reference is made to mission requirements, selection of the powerplant, the development of the configuration, mission avionics, and the brief flight test programme. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main problems encountered over the life of the project and (hopefully) the lessons learned.