NASA to Announce New X-Plane at Max Power Airshow, Isaacman Says It Is Not the SR-71-Inspired Design
Why It MattersA NASA push to rebuild in-house flight-test capability and grow its workforce signals renewed government demand for experimental aircraft, flight-test talent and supersonic and low-boom research.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency will unveil a new X-plane project at its upcoming Max Power expo and airshow, scheduled for Friday through Sunday. "We will announce a new X-plane…and it is not the one you're thinking of," he said on an episode of NASASpaceFlight's The Flame Trench podcast that streamed on YouTube on Friday.
The remark appears to refer to NASA's September tease of a new X-plane inspired by the SR-71 Blackbird. Speaking at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, Isaacman discussed rebuilding the agency's X-plane program while a silhouette of an aircraft sharing some of the SR-71's features was displayed behind him. Aviation Week later reported that NASA had taken SR-71A tail number 844, the last operational SR-71, retired in 1999, off display at its Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, and that NASA had looked to recruit former Blackbird engineers.
Isaacman said in December, on his second day in the job, that he would "love to see an expanded X-plane portfolio." On Friday he vowed that "there will be more X-planes" and said NASA aims to rebuild its flight-test capabilities and in-house "muscle memory" rather than outsourcing work to private contractors, and to grow its workforce. He named increasing the flight cadence of the X-59 as an early priority; the aircraft had flown only once before his December confirmation. The X-59, which broke the sound barrier in June and is designed to reduce sonic booms to quieter "sonic thumps," headed to Florida last week and will be on display at Max Power. Isaacman said it will return to Edwards, California, to finish envelope expansion work and then begin flying over cities. He said NASA intends to take delivery of the aircraft, built by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, after the airshow.
Other operational X-planes include the X-62A, a modified F-16D (formerly the NF-16D VISTA) used by the U.S. Air Force since 1992 and redesignated in 2021, and Boeing's uncrewed X-37B spaceplane, which launched most recently in August 2025 and has spent more than 430 days in low-Earth orbit; its longest flight, OTV-6, exceeded 900 days. The X-65, built by Aurora Flight Sciences to replace moving control surfaces with bursts of air, is planned to fly in 2027. The X-66 Transonic Truss-Braced Wing demonstrator was paused by NASA and Boeing in April 2025, and it is unclear when or if it will fly.
