re the area rule i am sure mary or henry can describe this more aptly then me but here is how i understand it at speed near supersonic the wind behaves like a fluid pipe it becomes incompressible so wind has to bend away from the wing edges as the wing thickens the more the pipes bend if they have no place to go they begin to stall and force compression stealing power from the vehicle high drag if you squeeze the fuselage so that these pipes have aplace to bend into then drag is reduced essentially teh cross sectional area of the aircraft shoulf remain constant for all areas of the fuselage that is where the wings are subtract teh cross sectional area of the wings from the fuselage pat
