You’re looking at what is perhaps the spy plane of the future. This UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), otherwise known as the Flapless Air Vehicle Integrated Industrial Research (Flaviir) project, contains no moving control surfaces (flaps, etc) and uses “fluidic thrust vectoring, where direction is changed with a secondary airflow�. The goal of the project is to create a low cost, low maintenance UAV that is completely autonomous in operation and can fly as well as a conventional aircraft. In addition, the UAV will be fully shielded from electromagnetic attacks, be it nuclear bombs or lightning.

Additional details and pics here.

Tomorrow’s aircraft flies without flaps [EETimes]