In the UAV world, the longest endurance loiter time fixed wing craft are either relatively slow and with long, straight wings (the 30 hour version of the rq-9, or the global hawk), or are flying wings...
> The Global Hawk has a wingspan over 50% as long as an A350, yet it weighs 1/10th as much. There is no comparison.
I agree that there is no comparison - in the sense that the two cannot be compared that way. For example: A childhood toy of mine (a compressed-air plane) needs a wingspan 1% as long as an A350, yet it only weighs 1/1,000,000th as much - and can still only stay airborne for 30 seconds!
This discussion [1] on the different most-aerodynamic plane shapes is fairly interesting, and certainly doesn't confirm the person above who claimed that a flying wing is the most aerodynamic shape.
> Sure, but those are not features you want in a cargo or passenger aircraft
Depends on the use case: for a feeder aircraft (regional to international airport) load, range and speed isn't terribly important, but fuel economy still is, for economical reasons (and for ecological reasons, which translate into economical by making the tickets an easier sell to a climate-aware population). In well developed regions, the main draw of feeder planes over ground transportation is not travel speed, but the convenience and piece of mind of checking in at your home airport.
Since a lot of regional (or effectively regional) airports are wildly overbuilt in hopes of attracting bigger connections there could be a market for a plane that fills the available width with a modern high aspect ratio wing to max out efficiency for small loads. If new aircraft designs weren't prohibitively expensive or fuel would be much more expensive this kind of plane would exist. Basically, put the wing of a Global Hawk on an ERJ-145.
