MORPHING PLANE IN WORKS LOCKHEED WINS CONTRACT FOR TECHNOLOGY.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Lockheed Martin's Palmdale plant has been awarded a $9.3 million Air Force contract to study technology for an aircraft that could really change shape as flight conditions or missions change, as morphing does for film and video images.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company-Palmdale will ``develop and demonstrate technologies for seamless, aerodynamically efficient, aerial vehicles capable of radical shape change,'' an Air Force spokesman said in a printed announcement.

Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Dianne Knippel said Monday the company's work on the program is classified as secret, and she cannot comment on it. Knippel said the contract will not require any additional hiring at the company.

Expected to be completed by 2006, work under the contract is part of an effort by the Air Force, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop ``smart'' aircraft capable of changing their shape to suit conditions or particular missions.

NASA officials are interested in such technology as a way to make aircraft quieter, more fuel-efficient, safer and more maneuverable.

Defense Department officials are interested in creating aircraft capable of multiple missions - especially for unmanned aircraft, which are gaining support for combat situations since they do not risk pilots' lives.

Many military aircraft are flown on multiple missions - for example, both in combat with enemy fighters and bombing targets on the ground - but there are performance trade-offs. An aircraft might have to be designed less efficiently for one mission to be able to conduct another, too.

To some extent, aircraft have been changing shape for decades. The Air Force's F-111 fighter-bombers and the Navy's F-14 fighter both were designed with wings that can swing out for low speeds and sweep back for high speeds.

But beyond that, officials at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia envision doing away with aircraft built with multiple, mechanically connected parts and systems. In their place would be aircraft with embedded ``smart'' materials and actuators to change an airplane's shape.

``Able to respond to the constantly varying conditions of flight, sensors will act like the nerves in a bird's wing and will measure the pressure over the entire surface of the wing,'' a Langley document says. ``The response to these measurements will direct actuators, which will function like the bird's wing muscles. Just as a bird instinctively uses different feathers on its wings to control its flight, the actuators will change the shape of the aircraft's wings to continually optimize flying conditions.''

At NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, NASA, the Air Force and Boeing are testing an F/A-18 jet modified so that its wings can flex in flight.

The F/A-18, in the active aeroelastic wing program, is testing whether the flexible wings give a pilot more control at speeds just above and below the sound barrier.

The F/A-18 tests, NASA officials say, are a stepping stone toward a long-range goal of aircraft that sense their environment and adapt their shape, engine performance or control systems to flight conditions such as speed, direction or even damage from enemy fire or an accident.

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Photo:

(ran in AV edition only) An artist's rendering from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shows the concept of a morphing airplane that could change its shape in flight.