i'm thinking it's something along the lines of a UAV, to avoid another Gary Powers incident, and for tons of other reasons. with a UAV you don't have the extra weight of life support and pilot space. you also don't have to worry about extremly high G loads achievable through a scram/ram jet engine. which this new spy plane probably has in order to achieve the speeds that everyone speculates it can achieve. as to the shape, no clue, could be a flying wing, could be delta wing, could be something we'd never imagine. someone get into skunkworks and let us know.
