The development trajectory of the flying-wing aircraft was sorted out, encompassing the early evolutionary history to the current state of research, along with contemplation and forecasts regarding future directions. Meanwhile, several key control challenges associated with flying-wing aircraft were discussed, including attitude control in a wide-speed domain under nonlinear conditions, high-precision autonomous take off and landing control under multiple effect coupling, robust control issues with approximate aerodynamic models and under strong disturbances, as well as control allocation problems arising from multi-surface redundancy. Moreover, the discussion on flow control issues that were currently a focal point in flying-wing aircraft research were discussed in depth. The following research trend of active flow control technology was expounded.