Aeralis Modular Trainer Concept

Despite recent history, there does seem to be still a lot of hype around computer modelling and simulations supposedly removing the need for building test & developmental hardware.
 
"Middle East funding to help Aeralis trainer take off.

UK start-up Aeralis has secured a major funding boost from an undisclosed Middle East backer, plus new technical support from propulsion giant Rolls-Royce, moving its modular jet trainer concept a step closer to manufacturing reality."


Paywalled, unfortunately . . . :mad:


cheers,
Robin.
 
"Middle East funding to help Aeralis trainer take off.

UK start-up Aeralis has secured a major funding boost from an undisclosed Middle East backer, plus new technical support from propulsion giant Rolls-Royce, moving its modular jet trainer concept a step closer to manufacturing reality."


Paywalled, unfortunately . . . :mad:


cheers,
Robin.
Browser incognito mode should bypass the paywall for Flight...

Zeb
 
"Middle East funding to help Aeralis trainer take off.

UK start-up Aeralis has secured a major funding boost from an undisclosed Middle East backer, plus new technical support from propulsion giant Rolls-Royce, moving its modular jet trainer concept a step closer to manufacturing reality."


Paywalled, unfortunately . . . :mad:


cheers,
Robin.
Browser incognito mode should bypass the paywall for Flight...

Zeb

:D ;)

cheers,
Robin.
 
I am beginning to think this "trend", of start up companies may be more than a passing fad. With the diffusion of information and expertise of aerodynamics and advanced materials, smaller companies without the huge overhead of a major manufacture can compete. Not just due to financial bottom-line on cost per unit, but they are able to maneuver better somewhat outside of the normal bureaucracy that adds significantly to the cost as design and development are dragged out. We also see a number of investors who are not willing to deal with the mega-corporation. Many of the second industry (engines, electronics, subsystem, etc.) are also ready to jump in.
I am a bit more optimistic that this aircraft could become a reality.
 
There's a parallel here with the Pharma industry, I think. Take the 'Pfizer' COVID vaccine. The technology was developed by the start-up BioNTech, who then partnered with Pfizer who took it through testing and into large-scale production.
I think the idea here is that Aeralis will do the design, and maybe even prototype construction, and then a Big Aerospace Enterprise will come in and do the testing, and then production . . .

cheers,
Robin.
 
Thus much of the overhead for the major contractor is avoided (especially if they get the platform after initial validation) and are able to meet a lower initial acquisition cost desired by the customer.
Three things I can think of right away that can crash this wonderful fairy tail. First the (western) government desiring the system has to have the discipline to not change the requirements in the process of development. Likely the death of most projects here. Second the vendors, both initial and eventual large-scale vendor have to mind their desire to make a Wunderflugzeug. Finally, operating cost is something like 2/3 the overall cost of a platform. It may be cheap to buy but costly to maintain.
 
Could have sworn I commented on this but apparently it was in this thread: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/re-equipping-the-red-arrows.37928/

Still meh btw. If they drop the modularity gimmick and get a grown-up to help them with the cutting out, I'd be more impressed. Plenty of proven companies to partner with around these parts. Of course, many of those have their own trainers on offer. Who to trust with some billions in scarce public money? If they say they can do it in less than billions, I have a bridge with one careful owner to sell! How much would ACMI (or whatever the kids call it these days) integration alone cost? Perhaps there is a friendly oligarch somewhere looking for an "in"-vestment. Cynical, moi?

If it does fly and big if at this juncture, I'm more than happy to turn back up in 20 years and ask: So how often has that modular swap-out been used in service then?
 
A snippet of news from Farnborough from the Royal Aeronautical Society news pages.

News over at UK modular trainer developer Aeralis was that the innovative project continues to build momentum, as it heads towards preliminary design review in September. The project, which seeks to develop a multirole family of combat aircraft that could range from UAVs, to advanced and basic trainers, drone tankers, and light fighters now has backing from a private Qatari investment group, as well as new partners in the form of Stirling Dynamics, and most interestingly today UK MFTS training provider Ascent. These two latest partners join Thales UK, Atkins. Siemens, Martin-Baker and Hamble Aerostructures.

Aeralis has also boosted its personnel by luring ex-BAE Systems Chief Flying Instructor and Head of Training Archie Neill out of retirement to be its Head of Sales. Neill, who previously worked on Hawk training and Typhoon cockpit design at BAE, is now turning his vast experience to Aeralis – where a cockpit working group is now refining this next generation military design. As well as modularity and 50% lower operational costs for operators, Aeralis will pioneer new ways of pilot training, where eye-tracking and big data will help develop custom flying courses for individual students. Aeralis plan to fly its first prototype in 2025.
 
Any solid indication so far on if and how the change over in government has affected the program?
 


It seems that they are using both CFD simulation and wind tunnel testing in their current design process. What's particularly noteworthy is that they have incorporated 3D printing into the fabrication of a significant portion of the wind tunnel model. This approach likely helped to reduce both the lead time and cost of the model's production.
 

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Aeralis is also focused on keeping the basic jet as simple and robust as possible. It is keeping away from supersonic and high AoA performance, where the digital simulation tools start to break down and become less useful.
Ok subsonic for trainers I can get by with and makes economic sense, but for an advanced trainer surely you would want some high AoA capability?

This has seen the top speed increased for the high-end aggressor variant, minor weight gains addressed and extra fuel added,
Speedy aggressor - as long as its subsonic and can't do high AoA manoeuvres...

Crawford revealed that Aeralis has switched to mostly metallic construction from composites – as that will provide a more robust and repairable structure to allow configurations to be switched over and swapped. This, he says, also assists in recycling.
I guess this is management speak for "composites proved not to be robust enough for mix and match structures"?

Aeralis features a ‘common core’ fuselage (CCF) to which different wings, undercarriage, tails and power units can then be fitted.
tweaking the landing gear from an in-house design to a COTS one in just a month.
the landing gear switched to a COTS design from an unnamed but existing aircraft. Switching to a COTS landing gear has led to time savings in the development schedule, as well as increasing fuel carriage.
Cool, I can swap out my undercarriage for... a tweaked off the shelf undercarriage...

The opportunity then, of an ’Air Tanker on steroids’ style leasing arrangement whereby air forces with the common core fuselage could mix and match configurations for basic/advanced trainers, lead-in fighter trainers, Red Air, UAVs and more, through a common leased pool of wing/tail kits, engine pods and spares to realise breathtaking economies of scale and cost savings may be just too irresistible to pass up.
If you replaced the words "savings" and "economies" with "profit" you might be nearer the truth.
Why lease an aircraft when you can lease the fuselage, the wings (maybe a BOGOF offer?), undercarriage, seats, engines, tail planes? Instead of one profit-making contract you now have a dozen - kerching!

You think the lesson of Turbomeca's woes on Adour might have registered - for the want of a compressor the Adour was lost, the Hawk was lost, the training schedule was lost, the new pilot was lost, the Air Marshal gnashed his teeth, the contractor was upset, the MoD was lamenting and the Defence Select Committee was confused and angry.
Simple and robust are buzzwords, only takes one part to have issues and you can be in deep doo, and with this bitsa plane there are countless parts that could go wrong.
 
Yes, this is mostly a PR exercise to attract naive investors, making plenty of fantastic projections around next to nothing.

But it gives us a precious information on the eve of French Bastide day: Brits also masters how to make mayonnaise.
 
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It's a shame, because the idea of a modular aircraft holds promise if executed correctly. Making it a "Rent-a-craft / Fleet as a service" isn't the way to do it IMO.
 
Imo the biggest weak-link in this concept is that Aeralis is supposed to be both a basic trainer and an advanced trainer, most of its more advanced models being based off the advanced trainer.

On the basic trainer side of things, turboprops have basically almost completely replaced the basic jet trainers. What's more to say when RAF itself is using Tucanos for BFJT, which I think already gives some hints on what one should think about Aeralis' approach. I mean, sure there are some examples like the Italian airforce which has the MB-339/M-345 that kind of bridges the basic training and advanced training phase but to my knowledge, since the S.211, M-345 is the only jet powered trainer also meant to perform the basic training role designed in the west, and that also porbably only commercially viable since it is based on the S.211. Hell, by now most people would've forgotten about its existence, but one of Textron AirLand Scorpion's envisioned market was the basic trainer one; and its business case was utterly destroyed by turboprops as well. What's better, Scorpion was also meant to be a modular aircraft that could fulfill different roles, although in case of Scorpion it was a modular mission payload on the centre bay, being way less ambitious.

I, for one, can't really see how Aeralis would be any better on that regard in the basic trainer market. There are even models like PC-21 which Pilatus is pitching as a turboprop that can fulfill both the basic and advanced trainer role, basically an overlapping market position to the M-345; we're already seeing who's winning out here. Even if we only count the sales from 2017 onwards, when the Italian air foce placed its orders for the M-345, PC-21 is still ahead and I only expect the gap to widen going forward.

Even if we assume a situation in which there's an actual business case for a newly designed jet-powered basic trainer, designing a common design on which not only both the basic trainer and advanced trainer are based off of, but also more heavy duty roles like a LIFT, LWF, agressor, etc. are based on seems just ill-advised. Aeralis' original vision of Dartjet, which could perform the roles of both the basic and advanced trainer, was probably only expanded to what Aeralis is today because they've realised there's already an existing option in M-345, which is basically what Dartjet was supposed to be. JSF started on the grounds that a tri-service common-design fighter was gonna save them more than $40 billion. We know how that ended.

Last but not least, most of those air forces who actually want a light weight fighter/operational trainer/agressor wants an aircraft that could do not just one of them but all of them. Even better if that same aircraft can be used as an advanced trainer and a LIFT... which is exactly what the TA/FA-50 is, and KAI have enjoyed great success taking bulk of this niche market. So, TA/FA-50 already has an inherent advantage in terms of established userbase and maintenance commonality issues compared to Aeralis' concept which actually is disadvantageous when it comes to economics of scale. They are basically fragmentating a market demand which could be fulfilled with a single model into several different models, albeit based on common designs, but with dissimilar modules. It just doesn't make sense if you consider how the market has been for the last decade and how it most likely will continue to be. Not to mention the 38% parts commonality the T-50 design shares with the F-16, as well as very similar handling characteristics/very short transition time from T-50 to F-16, which are both clear advantage for the T-50 family.

To sum it up, it loses out to turboprop trainers in the basic trainer segment, has strong competition in the "basic and advanced" trainer segment, its concept not actually suited for more advanced missions segment compared to existing design(s), Aeralis' claims regarding what they could achieve with digital engineering still unproven and still without any concrete primary user/customer/investor. All in all, even if Aeralis can design a common design trainer with help of digital engineering/digital twin with ease as they claim, I just can't see a business case with their concept of modular trainer. It just feels like a fancier Scorpion in the making.
 
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It's a shame, because the idea of a modular aircraft holds promise if executed correctly. Making it a "Rent-a-craft / Fleet as a service" isn't the way to do it IMO.
Yes but that is probably not the right market that was chosen.

A modular civilian aircraft (General aviation) could have been a better target IMOHO.
 
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It's a shame, because the idea of a modular aircraft holds promise if executed correctly. Making it a "Rent-a-craft / Fleet as a service" isn't the way to do it IMO.
Yes but that is probably not the right market that was chosen.

A modular civilian aircraft (General aviation) could have been better targe IMOHO.
Actually, I think it only makes sense if Aeralis is designed for a lease based business model or even better, PMC like private pilot training business for smaller countries and air forces. Think about the case where companies like Draken International or Top Aces acquires Aeralis. It would basically work as market demand hedging for less price. The problem is that when you, for example have two complete aircrafts, namely one basic trainer and one advanced trainer/LIFT/LWF, you could actually meet two customer demands simultaneously whereas with one common module and two sets of wing modules and propusion modules, you could only meet one. So it really comes down to three questions in such case: how much more expensive is procuring and maintaining two complete aicrafts compared to one common airframe with four module sets? Which option does the opportunity cost favor? Is the market demand fluctuation big enough to justify such approach?

In my view, both questions are better answered with just having two aircrafts than with the "flexibility to reconfigurate". Especially when we consider the fact that companies like Draken or Top Aces or any other PMCs runs second-hand aircraft from the military acquired for low prices. It's exactly like the situation for private acrobatic/maneuverable jets market, where there have been various private projects in the last 2+ decades where some company came up with a new single-seater light jet-powered aircraft design for richman's hobby purposes; most if not all of them died because second-hand L-39s retired from the former east-bloc countries were so dirt cheap. Not to mention these market demands are contract based.

Again, when it comes to actual primary ownership of this aircraft by the military, I just see absolutely no point, as pointed out in my earlier post.
 
Yes I wonder if the intent might be to aim at the private contractors like Draken etc., but they seem happy buying cheap military surplus aircraft and more importantly being able to use ex-forces personnel, both pilots and groundcrew who are familiar with them. I don't think they would want the hassle of introducing a whole new aircraft of novel configuration that nobody has experience with.

Yet all this seems very whimsically RAF-pitched to me - a plane that you can chase sheep around Welsh Valleys one day, pretend you are a 'bad guy' doing a Top Gun impression the next day and then at the weekend slip into a Red Arrows suit and wow the crowds at the seaside.
And yet for all the waffle about replacing the Red Arrows Hawks (seriously who cares?) there is zero mention of THE KEY date - 2033 - when the current UKFMTS contract expires. I would expect the MOD to open the bidding around 2030, all the runners and riders will have be ready by then. If they can't get the prototypes built, flown and certified in time for 2033 then they have zero hope against the PC-21, M-346 and T-7A. Curiously with Ascent being one of their partners I am surprised there isn't more sales pitch towards meeting FMTS.

For this was to work, Aeralis would need some serious MRO support from an experienced company behind it for all the modification work required with the swapping of modules. I don't see any of that yet, still there is time I suppose, but without it I don't see the business case standing up beyond the Powerpoint slides.
 
The logic is probably similar to the F-35 logic: build one set of systems (hydraulic, pneumatic, fuel, flight controls, etc.) that can be bolted into three or four distinct airframes.

If they build this so small that it is only useful as a trainer, (e.g. no significant warload) then it will deprive Third World air forces of light strike airplanes.
And significant sales potential as a result.

I know that if I were advising a low-budget country in need of fighters, I would strongly suggest something like the M-346 or T/A-50. And it seems Boeing "intends to offer" an armed version of the T-7 to replace all the old F-5s still flying. Or Yak-130, if they're on better terms with the Russians, but that's subject to severe delivery problems these days. The JL-9 and -10 are also options if they're on good terms with China.
 
Much as I'd like to see them succeed...the stand at DSEi is plastered with new ideas of a 'Loyal Wingman' with V tail and an MQ-25 style unmanned tanker...think they're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks...
It'd be a lot of work to turn a subsonic trainer airframe into a Loyal Wingman.

And I'm pretty sure even that little trainer with a nose pod full of fuel instead of a cockpit wouldn't have enough fuel to be worthwhile as a drone tanker...
 
I don't think they would want the hassle of introducing a whole new aircraft of novel configuration that nobody has experience with.

Yet all this seems very whimsically RAF-pitched to me
Exactly. To be very honest, Aeralis would've looked better off had they just ditched this "basic and advanced trainer in the same time and more, through modules and reconfigurable airframe" rubbish. Just focus on the digital engineering part, implement new materials and other design methods and incorporate MOTS embedded logistics support system and advanced training suite from respective solution providers like Elbit, CAE, Red 6, etc. By doing so they'd be able to showcase that with digital engineering, non-traditional actors like start-ups could also tackle the military aircraft market like that of advanced trainer market.

Of course since they are a start-up, being sensible is not the point on their agenda but instead they'd want a revolution not a boring evolution since that's what attracts investors. Fancy buzzwords and concepts.

Afterall, what I've mentioned above would probably be better exectued by BAE and they probably would assume such role once they think they need a next-gen trainer to replace Hawk AJT and update their product portfolio, which is probably still at least decades away. Also, I'm currious if there's any security issues since those MOTS solutions that needs to be included for any future advanced trainers, especially the integrated trainer suite, could be a sensitive product.

And yet for all the waffle about replacing the Red Arrows Hawks (seriously who cares?) there is zero mention of THE KEY date - 2033 - when the current UKFMTS contract expires. I would expect the MOD to open the bidding around 2030, all the runners and riders will have be ready by then. If they can't get the prototypes built, flown and certified in time for 2033 then they have zero hope against the PC-21, M-346 and T-7A. Curiously with Ascent being one of their partners I am surprised there isn't more sales pitch towards meeting FMTS.
The key here would be if UK MoD is interested in expanding the UKMFTS scheme going forward, that is, also including the acquisition of fast-mover trainer by the contractor. As you've said, Ascent is one of their partners, and given Aeralis' constant emphasis of application of their concept to the lease-based/military outsourcing business, it might be that they are aiming for the replacement of Hawk T1s still in service, which would probably need a replacement once current DE&S contract with BAE expires, which also ends by 2033. Then again, I don't know how it would even remotely be a sound idea to acquire Aeralis instead of additional Hawk T2s to replace those Hawk T1s. Maybe it could just so happen to be "too expensive" to acquire more Hawk T2s, as it has been the problem when the first Hawk T2 contract was being worked on.
 
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The key here would be if UK MoD is interested in expanding the UKMFTS scheme going forward, that is, also including the acquisition of fast-mover trainer by the contractor. As you've said, Ascent is one of their partners, and given Aeralis' constant emphasis of application of their concept to the lease-based/military outsourcing business, it might be that they are aiming for the replacement of Hawk T1s still in service, which would probably need a replacement once current DE&S contract with BAE expires, which also ends by 2033. Then again, I don't know how it would even remotely be a sound idea to acquire Aeralis instead of additional Hawk T2s to replace those Hawk T1s. Maybe it could just so happen to be "too expensive" to acquire more Hawk T2s, as it has been the problem when the first Hawk T2 contract was being worked on.
The Fast Jet element of UKFTS will be interesting. It was separated from the rest of the Ascent contract by the Labour government and awarded to BAE (with the implications it was a political done deal to secure Hawk LIFT production - at a recent Defence Select Committee even the MoD seemed confused as to why the contract was split).

Hawk production is now over - I doubt it could be restarted in the 2030s, too much of the supply chain would be gone. BAE would probably bid on the basis of refurbed T.2s (BAE Australia has developed a 40,000 flying hour life programme they could piggyback off). Leonardo would push the M346 (which lost out to T.2 the first time around) - the newly announced Airbus-Leonardo LIFT tie-up around M346 could prove very interesting, the practically have the entire European Hawk/Alpha/L-39 replacement market in their grasp.
Ascent being partners with Aeralis the logic is clear but they they might be hedging bets and go with someone else's offering. Surely the T-7A will crop up, maybe through Boeing UK teamed up with a local partner. T/A-50 seems less likely but it depends on who the bidders are and who they think will offer cheap enough airframes.

The key thing will be advanced avionics for simulating 6th Gen capabilities (synthetic radar and IRST etc., maybe synthetic UCAV control etc.) and performance. That's what the MoD is going to want - not a plane they need to swap wings and undercarriages.
I'm not seeing anything on avionics - as you say, where are the advanced systems coming from?
 
The Fast Jet element of UKFTS will be interesting. It was separated from the rest of the Ascent contract by the Labour government and awarded to BAE (with the implications it was a political done deal to secure Hawk LIFT production - at a recent Defence Select Committee even the MoD seemed confused as to why the contract was split).
Oh that's interesting, wonder what the exact reasoning was behind it. Probably cost saving? Then again MoD wanted to lease the Hawk instead of outright buying it for cost-reduction and risk sharing purposes, which I also think could just as well be met with an ownership by the contractor...

Hawk production is now over - I doubt it could be restarted in the 2030s, too much of the supply chain would be gone. BAE would probably bid on the basis of refurbed T.2s (BAE Australia has developed a 40,000 flying hour life programme they could piggyback off). Leonardo would push the M346 (which lost out to T.2 the first time around) - the newly announced Airbus-Leonardo LIFT tie-up around M346 could prove very interesting, the practically have the entire European Hawk/Alpha/L-39 replacement market in their grasp.
I never knew that Hawk production line was closed. I've thought that the deliveris to the Sauds and Qataris would've kept the line running. But then again, if BAE Australia has such solution, refurbish and upgrade surely seems like the next most logical choice. Again, I don't think the British MoD nor the government would be particularly keen on acquiring M-346 when they have an existing British (and partially Australian) option.

Ascent being partners with Aeralis the logic is clear but they they might be hedging bets and go with someone else's offering. Surely the T-7A will crop up, maybe through Boeing UK teamed up with a local partner. T/A-50 seems less likely but it depends on who the bidders are and who they think will offer cheap enough airframes.
Oh they are obviously hedging. It's only a MoU afterall. Ascent probably only wants the merit of having the door open in case Aeralis magically pulls it off.
 
I never knew that Hawk production line was closed. I've thought that the deliveris to the Sauds and Qataris would've kept the line running.
Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I think that these have all been delivered now.
I would think at the present time another order could be fulfilled but once the line goes cold the sub-suppliers are likely to move on to other work pretty quickly.

(Incidentally the Qatari Hawks are still in the UK in a joint RAF/QAF training squadron and are designated Hawk T.2A by the MoD to avoid confusion)
 
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The key thing will be advanced avionics for simulating 6th Gen capabilities (synthetic radar and IRST etc., maybe synthetic UCAV control etc.) and performance. That's what the MoD is going to want - not a plane they need to swap wings and undercarriages.
I'm not seeing anything on avionics - as you say, where are the advanced systems coming from?
Its an interesting observation

My expectation would be that these would just be software, and quite probably the same software that runs currently in ground based synthetic environments. We're just heading towards ever more of a blend between live and synthetic environments. Probably one key overlooked hardware enabler would be a high data rate line of sight data link to provide multi party updates (e.g. target aircraft position, attitude, modes to feed into radar emulator hosted on another aircraft). I think there's a need for more than RAIDs/ACMI will support.

But otherwise the software models already exist and are either owned by government already or by sub suppliers so there's maybe not much profit to made?
 
Its an interesting observation

My expectation would be that these would just be software, and quite probably the same software that runs currently in ground based synthetic environments. We're just heading towards ever more of a blend between live and synthetic environments. Probably one key overlooked hardware enabler would be a high data rate line of sight data link to provide multi party updates (e.g. target aircraft position, attitude, modes to feed into radar emulator hosted on another aircraft). I think there's a need for more than RAIDs/ACMI will support.

But otherwise the software models already exist and are either owned by government already or by sub suppliers so there's maybe not much profit to made?
I mean, the existence of these MOTS solutions are not of question. Elbit for example already offers MOTS EVA solution(which is based on what they've developed for M-346) for most aircraft, be it AJT, fighter, helo, etc. The question is whether if the aircraft MC supports the Elibt EVA module/OFP and if EVA is actually representative of newer fighters with more sensitive information. I have no doubt that they'd be offering EVA for F-16, F-15 and Eurofighter for example since the former two are in their inventory and the latter they would've developd in conjunction with Italy. Maybe F-35 as well going forward, but GCAP? Now that's a very sensitive piece of tech.

So maybe there's a possibility of joint development of EVA solution by Leonardo and MHI for example, that could be used by all 3 countries that will operate GCAP. Now the question would be if the US will allow integration of such EVA on Red Hawk should Japan decide to proccure them as T-4 replacements. It's an interesting question, since AJT/LIFTs are getting more and more avionics reliant. As we've seen with fighter jet business for the last few decades, integrateing foreign avionics and munition to a fighter from certain country, especially from the US has proved very hard. I don't know if they will keep that same stance for the integration of foreign embedded training avionics or software.

Now talking about LVC and need for high bandwidth data link, no worries for that. If you're unsatisfied with current MOTS solution out there, recent development is a militarised COTS solutions and afaik, there are already quite a few companies out there who are offering a civilian protoccol based training data link or are preparing to offer one in the near future. Korea for example is developing a dedicated embedded training unit solution in conjuction with the upgrad of ROKAF training simulation infrastructure to full-fidelity LVC environement. This programme includes a dedicated ETU data link and I expect other AFs to have each theri own kind of a programme similar to the Korean one.

So data link throughput for more complicated LVC environment is not that great of a concern compared to other concerns like the one I've mentioned above.
 
I mean, the existence of these MOTS solutions are not of question. Elbit for example already offers MOTS EVA solution(which is based on what they've developed for M-346) for most aircraft, be it AJT, fighter, helo, etc. The question is whether if the aircraft MC supports the Elibt EVA module/OFP and if EVA is actually representative of newer fighters with more sensitive information. I have no doubt that they'd be offering EVA for F-16, F-15 and Eurofighter for example since the former two are in their inventory and the latter they would've developd in conjunction with Italy. Maybe F-35 as well going forward, but GCAP? Now that's a very sensitive piece of tech.

So maybe there's a possibility of joint development of EVA solution by Leonardo and MHI for example, that could be used by all 3 countries that will operate GCAP. Now the question would be if the US will allow integration of such EVA on Red Hawk should Japan decide to proccure them as T-4 replacements. It's an interesting question, since AJT/LIFTs are getting more and more avionics reliant. As we've seen with fighter jet business for the last few decades, integrateing foreign avionics and munition to a fighter from certain country, especially from the US has proved very hard. I don't know if they will keep that same stance for the integration of foreign embedded training avionics or software.
I think the combined order size for trainers would be enough to get Boeing on the side of the GCAP team.


Now talking about LVC and need for high bandwidth data link, no worries for that. If you're unsatisfied with current MOTS solution out there, recent development is a militarised COTS solutions and afaik, there are already quite a few companies out there who are offering a civilian protoccol based training data link or are preparing to offer one in the near future. Korea for example is developing a dedicated embedded training unit solution in conjuction with the upgrad of ROKAF training simulation infrastructure to full-fidelity LVC environement. This programme includes a dedicated ETU data link and I expect other AFs to have each theri own kind of a programme similar to the Korean one.


So data link throughput for more complicated LVC environment is not that great of a concern compared to other concerns like the one I've mentioned above.
As a bare minimum, you could use the internet linkage used on commercial aircraft, forget the name of it, and run all that encrypted through a unique network that happens to use basic IP structure. Like the difference between NIPRNET and SIPRNET.
 
I think the combined order size for trainers would be enough to get Boeing on the side of the GCAP team.
I actually think that combinded order size doesn't really fit here. Italy already has M-346 and as for RAF, they are going to offer the notional Hawk "T.3", as mentioned in the Hawk thread. So it's only JASDF, but you've got it right that the order size will be enough counting Japan alone, since they have demand for 100+ of the replacement trainer, althought the T-4 replacement probably wouldn't replace it on 1 to 1 basis due to the reasons I've mentioned above.

The actual problem here, again, is the red tapes regarding technology security issues. It's either GCAP team develops EVA for the trainer or Boeing develops the EVA themselves with help of Japan. There's security issues either way. As for the former, as I've mentioned, US is very strict when it comes to integrating foreign avionics to their jets, although I'm not yet sure if such tight controls will extend to trainers. As for the second option, GCAP team might not want to share Boeing about the details of the GCAP avionics. Either way, it's a bit of a tricky situation.

As a bare minimum, you could use the internet linkage used on commercial aircraft, forget the name of it, and run all that encrypted through a unique network that happens to use basic IP structure. Like the difference between NIPRNET and SIPRNET.
That's basically what a lot of ETS solution providers were doing; develop a training data link based on IP. It's very straight forward.
 
I still get a gnarly feel from this 'project'. Not exactly a sparkling reaction so far.
 
I actually think that combinded order size doesn't really fit here. Italy already has M-346 and as for RAF, they are going to offer the notional Hawk "T.3", as mentioned in the Hawk thread. So it's only JASDF, but you've got it right that the order size will be enough counting Japan alone, since they have demand for 100+ of the replacement trainer, althought the T-4 replacement probably wouldn't replace it on 1 to 1 basis due to the reasons I've mentioned above.

The actual problem here, again, is the red tapes regarding technology security issues. It's either GCAP team develops EVA for the trainer or Boeing develops the EVA themselves with help of Japan. There's security issues either way. As for the former, as I've mentioned, US is very strict when it comes to integrating foreign avionics to their jets, although I'm not yet sure if such tight controls will extend to trainers. As for the second option, GCAP team might not want to share Boeing about the details of the GCAP avionics. Either way, it's a bit of a tricky situation.
Boeing could certainly keep the GCAP stuff compartmentalized, but I agree that the question is whether the US would allow GCAP tech to be inserted into the T-7A.

That said, Israel did get permission to add their own tech to the F-35, so a good enough lobby could make it happen.



That's basically what a lot of ETS solution providers were doing; develop a training data link based on IP. It's very straight forward.
Ah, good to hear!
 

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