BMatthews,

Apart from some extra wetted area, I don't think the deltas are all that draggy in level flight, since they are, after all, flying wings with no extra stuff to add drag. The main problem with most of them is the lack of fairings. Engines, pipes, and linkages are certainly causing much more drag than the wing. In turns, you could do better than the delta for drag, but the flying wing delta configuration is very forgiving, easy to build strong, and has so much wing area that it turns tight and can fly at fairly slow speeds. Overall, not a bad solution for the armchair speed demon. Also not the optimum one, as you point out.

banktoturn