The first century of aviation design didn’t give trendspotters much to get excited about, with the vast majority of production aircraft remaining little more than tubes with wings attached. Later, boomerangshaped outliers known as “flying wings,” such the Northrop YB-49 and Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, captured the aeronautical industry’s imagination with their futuristically stealthy looks, while military jets with blended-wing-body (BWB) configurations—notably the B-1 Lancer and
