After 75 some-odd-years of aviation, the F-117 “Nighthawk” (first flight: 1981) is perhaps the first airplane that is designed with almost no regard for aerodynamics.  Of course it flies, but its form is largely dictated by its primary goal of appearing invisible to enemy radar.

Of course, a radical re-thinking of conventional thinking was not new to aviation (the quest for supersonic flight demanded a complete reunderstanding of the wing, for instance), but the Nighthawk benefits for the confluence of a mission and a permissive technology.

The mission is self-explanatory: evade ground radar in order to penetrate enemy territory to destroy targets.  The F-117 was conceived not as a “stealth fighter” but as an air-to-ground attack aircraft.  Accordingly, the Nighthawk is designed to slip through a new medium—the electromagnetic medium of radar— rather than just air.  The “aerodynamics” of the electromagnetic medium has its own rules, which are very visibly at odds with the demands of conventional aerodynamics.  In fact, radar was able exploit the necessary form of aircraft up to this point to force them to betray their position.

The disjuncture between the forms of electromagnetic and conventional aerodynamics is mediated by the digital fly-by-wire system, the permissive technology that allows “stealth” aircraft to get off the ground.  Traditionally, the cockpit control mechanisms in the pilot’s hands and at his feet mechanically transmit the pilot’s exertions to the craft’s exterior control surfaces.  Fly-by-wire systems, on the other hand, generally place a computer between the pilot’s controls and hydraulic systems that manipulate the aircraft’s control systems.  Initially, these computers were analog, as they were in the Concord, the first airliner with a fly-by-wire system.  Eventually, digital computers entered the cockpit allowing for a more flexible control system which could read input from a variety of sources (such as external sensors and navigation equipment), not just the pilot.

Without a digital fly-by-wire system, a Nighthawk is more or less uncontrollable.  It is so aerodynamically unstable that several computers work in concert to monitor the planes movement along multiple axes compared to the input received from the pilot, and constantly maintain the positioning of the control surfaces.  The computers continually create a best fit between their perceptions of the actual condition of the airplane’s flight, and the demands of the pilot for that flight.  In a way, the pilot is controlling nothing more than a flight simulator that is actually flying.

To wit, an anecdote:

“On September 25, 1985 the left tail fin “fluttered off” of FSD-2 (#781) while doing a pull-up maneuver during a daylight weapons test at Groom Lake. As the black tail with its large white 781 fell to earth, the pilot, Maj. John Beesley, was unaware anything had happened (because of the computer compensation) until the chase plane told him…”  [Italics added]

In the end, the pilot brought his F-117 in for a safe landing and was promptly awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for not crashing a damaged airplane that handled as if nothing were wrong with it.  This is all to say that digital fly-by-wire is a permissive technology in that supports a form designed for goals (evading radar) that are completely at odds with its ability to fulfill its primary goal (safely fly through the air).

This happens a lot in our built environment.  Consider the grocery store or the super-center:  design goals that have more to do with the economics of providing cheap merchandise to shoppers than with their inhabitability have hijacked the form of these places.  Wal-Mart’s fly-by-wire system is air conditioning or electric lighting, without which the extremely deep and wide floorplan would be intolerably hot (or cold) and dark.

The culpability of these systems as permissive agents in our untenable appetite for cheap stuff is maybe under-acknowledged, and while fly-by-wire for buildings does not need to be scrapped all together, it needs to be re-imagined and reintegrated into other changing goals.  For instance, a Wal-Mart that is cooled by a “natural” ventilation scheme isn’t just a Wal-Mart with a different floorplan or one with a cooling tower.  It is a Wal-Mart that is fundamentally different than today’s Wal-Mart in everything from building layout, to business model, labor relations, and so on.