Plasma wings could change the way airplanes are designed and flown
I can't seem to find anything in google, but I remember reading about something similar some ~10 years ago for military aircraft.  Apparently there were experimental fighter jets that had large ionizing beams of some sort shooting in front of the aircraft?  The claim was along the lines of by ionizing the air in front of the craft, it significantly reduced the drag the plane experienced flying through that pocket of air moments later.I'm having a hard time finding articles on it, but it sounds so similar to this article.