What are the advantages and disadvantages of an oblique wing over a swing wing?
The oblique wing and the swing wing aim to reduce the drag over a wide range of speeds by changing the wing sweep. While the swing wing rotates a part of the wing to achieve this, the oblique wing rotates the whole wing.

The first production aircraft with variable sweep wings was the F111 Aardvark, while the most famous one is the F-14 Tomcat.


"F-14 Tomcat prototypes in flight c1972" by U.S. Navy - U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 2011.003.301.027. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

However, the only full sized aircraft to be produced with an oblique or pivot wing was the NASA AD-1, which was strictly an experimental aircraft.


"AD-1 ObliqueWing 60deg 19800701" by NASA - http://www1.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/AD-1/HTML/ECN-15846.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

A comparison between the two can be made like this:


Aerodynamics: The oblique wing is much more refined aerodynamically compared to the swing wing and had lesser drag. In fact the AD-1 was designed to be as close to the optimal for all the flight regimes. Also, the aircraft was designed to have an elliptical lift distribution to reduce induced drag. on the other hand, the variable geometry aircraft did not offer any significant advantages over fixed wing baseline aircraft.


However, the asymmetric stall of the oblique wing aircraft would cause problems as one side of the wing is swept forwards and the other side is swept towards the rear.


Structure: The hinge was arguably the most critical structural part in variable sweep wing aircraft. The hinge should not only have a very high reliability, but also have the capacity to bear the high aerodynamic loads. 



"Tornado variable sweep wing Manching" by Sovxx - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

In this case, the swing wing aircraft are better off compared to the oblique wing aircraft as the amount of load on the hinge is significantly lower.

For example, the oblique wing hinge has to take not only the weight of the entire aircraft wing (the swing wing aircraft typically rotate only a part of the wing), but also the entire fuel load (the amount of fuel carried in the variable part of the wing is significantly small). Also, the hinge should take the load of the control system too.


Handling and Controls: The handling of the swing wing aircraft have been brought closer to the fixed wing aircraft over time. However,the handling qualities of AD-1 was found to be poor, with unusual trim requirements and inertial coupling affecting the aircraft negatively.


For instance, the AD-1 required about 10° of bank in order to trim the aircraft with no sideslip at 60° wing sweep.The aircraft also experienced pitch-roll coupling and the associated aeroelastic effects made for unpleasant handling qualities above 45 degrees sweep.

One advantage of the oblique wing aircraft is that the center of lift and mass doesn't move as the wings are swept. This happens in the swing wing aircraft and the control system is complicated 


Engine and payload In case of swing wing aircraft, the engines can be mounted in the fuselage (like F-14) or in the (fixed part of) wing itself (like B-1). In case of the oblique wing aircraft, locating the engines anywhere except the fuselage is effectively ruled out.


In case of military aircraft, use of hardpoints in the variable point of the wing is limited (for one thing, this will increase the load on the hinge). This is a much more serious problem for oblique wing aircraft as this limits the payload that could be carried.

However, the main reason for the lack of further development of oblique wing aircraft is their unusual and unpleasant control qualities.