Aeralis Modular Trainer Concept

Lookin' more like a Hawk every day . . .

cheers,
Robin.
 
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Seems like a lot of wetted area for a small trainer; much like the Buckeye, sitting on top of the engine(s) adds a lot of bulk.

But at least it's nearly looking like a Hawk now.
 
I think Aeralis is realising its their last chance hence all the recent promos

Seems to have morphed into an L-39NG / Aermacchi 345 /S.211 with slightly more swept wings. Although the engine intake area looks tiny compared to these aircraft.
 
red admiral said:
I think Aeralis is realising its their last chance hence all the recent promos

Seems to have morphed into an L-39NG / Aermacchi 345 /S.211 with slightly more swept wings. Although the engine intake area looks tiny compared to these aircraft.
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Kiltonge said:
Seems like a lot of wetted area for a small trainer; much like the Buckeye, sitting on top of the engine(s) adds a lot of bulk.

But at least it's nearly looking like a Hawk now.
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Until recently they had a former BAe Kingston aerodynamicist working on the wing design.

The Hawk was originally meant to replace the Jet Provost, Gnat, Hunter and partly the Jaguar T2. It had a wing design to cover a wide speed range.

It's a shame Aeralis did not focus on 'a better Hawk' sooner, rather than the concept of modularity.
 
Mike Pryce said:
It's a shame Aeralis did not focus on 'a better Hawk' sooner, rather than the concept of modularity.
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Quite. A "cheaper" Hawk is very achievable with low risk and gives something adequate to deliver a fast jet syllabus at much lower cost than the pseudo-fighters like T-50.

Rather than focus on high risk modularity, or recently they've refocused on "digital". At the same point it took them over 10 years to get to a wind tunnel after which they then significantly changed the configuration design.
 
red admiral said:
Quite. A "cheaper" Hawk is very achievable with low risk and gives something adequate to deliver a fast jet syllabus at much lower cost than the pseudo-fighters like T-50.
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I'm not sure how much of the fast jet syllabus you can do without radar and at least simulated missile capability, though.

Plus, a LIFT psuedo-fighter can give you a lot more sales than a pure trainer, since any country with air policing needs can buy a LIFT and use it.
 
red admiral said:
Quite. A "cheaper" Hawk is very achievable with low risk and gives something adequate to deliver a fast jet syllabus at much lower cost than the pseudo-fighters like T-50.

Rather than focus on high risk modularity, or recently they've refocused on "digital". At the same point it took them over 10 years to get to a wind tunnel after which they then significantly changed the configuration design.
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I think they were going for a flawed premise. Right around the time Aeralis and its modularity concept was conceived, it looked like outsourcing of air training for many of the western air forces looked like a way to go. For private training and leasing companies, modularity concept does have certain merit. The problem was that such trends, althoigh very much a thing still, hasn't become as mainstream as perhaps Aeralis thought it would be.

Also, by the time you have the money to buy multiple modules, might as well buy a complete aircraft since I can't imagine these modules being that much cheaper. Even if their "modularity" was ala common platforms found in automotive world or rail rolling stocks, so not meant for swapping of modules between exusting airframes, but for efficient production of several different models with common design, that also didn't made sense since for an aircraft that needs to be highly tailored to its mission profile, you either jeopardise the flight characteristics/performance of certain models for your mainstream model, or you design an airframe that could cater to all flight profiles but by doing so suboptimal for every one of them.

Then again, when it comes to "better hawk", there already were M345 and L39NG so they thought they were in need to find a new market, which actually didn't exist.
Scott Kenny said:
I'm not sure how much of the fast jet syllabus you can do without radar and at least simulated missile capability, though.

Plus, a LIFT psuedo-fighter can give you a lot more sales than a pure trainer, since any country with air policing needs can buy a LIFT and use it.
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Exactly. If you could afford a modular fighter with different modules, might as well just buy a jet that could do all of what Aeralis could do from the get-go.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'm not sure how much of the fast jet syllabus you can do without radar and at least simulated missile capability, though.

Plus, a LIFT psuedo-fighter can give you a lot more sales than a pure trainer, since any country with air policing needs can buy a LIFT and use it.
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You can do all of it as Hawk is currently doing for UK and many other countries

Hawk has orders of magnitude higher sales than any LIFT pseudo-fighter. These are bought in very small numbers by very small numbers of countries, if they are bought at all.

1,000 Hawks built with around 50 of those being "fighters"
 
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If BAE and HAL hadn't fallen out over the Hawk-i then it's possible that they could have just moved the production to India lock, stock and barrel and kept cranking them out, perhaps at lower cost.

I'm not sure that the sub-Hawk/L39/M346 market is any less a chimera than LIFTs to be honest. The M345 hasn't sold outside of Italy. I'm hard pushed to think of anything in that bracket that has sold well since the 1980s. The turboprops - especially the PC21 - have hoovered up this sector of the market.
 
Hood said:
If BAE and HAL hadn't fallen out over the Hawk-i then it's possible that they could have just moved the production to India lock, stock and barrel and kept cranking them out, perhaps at lower cost.

I'm not sure that the sub-Hawk/L39/M346 market is any less a chimera than LIFTs to be honest. The M345 hasn't sold outside of Italy. I'm hard pushed to think of anything in that bracket that has sold well since the 1980s. The turboprops - especially the PC21 - have hoovered up this sector of the market.
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Exactly. We're at the stage of aviation development that we don't need any jets for basic training anymore, and where they could even do more advanced training. I think I've talked about this a few pages ago on this thread.

It's basically LIFT or/and prop these days
 
Not sure. As an example, the old Tucano aircraft French used for training took 20min to get to level 200. That's 20 min with an IP that fly numerous time a day and a pilot that has a short flying time at his disposal to become a professional.
Idem for G and alpha maneuvering. Being limited to 6g and well below 20 degree (like the French Alphajet today) and having do do so loosing altitude in a downward spiral (like the 346 that Aermacchi sell) is not the most efficient way to spend tax payer money.

Propeller trainer aircraft are only relevant if you sideline operational realities and look very broadly at the result of the syllabus. At the end, it's always more hours on Frontline airplane at a strategic cost for a nation to pay dearly.
Let's not forget 50 years of a charge for really effective training since Vietnam.
 
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Aeralis aiming at the basic trainer market never seemed to make any sense. Cheaper to use an already existing turboprop. Or it's a relatively simple aircraft and many countries want to develop their own rather than buy in. And if this market doesn't exist then that eliminates the main need for modularity.

So you're left with a heavy advanced trainer / LIFT airframe that you could put refuelling pods on. But given the size class then you'll have near zero useful fuel offload - need multiple tankers to fill up even one fast jet!

Hood said:
If BAE and HAL hadn't fallen out over the Hawk-i then it's possible that they could have just moved the production to India lock, stock and barrel and kept cranking them out, perhaps at lower cost.
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I think it needed a significant redesign of the air vehicle to reduce costs - it's sort of like a giant Meccano set now. And then a cheaper, more fuel efficient engine than Adour that'll be in production for longer. All very doable at low risk, but still multiple hundreds of £m engineering effort.
 
red admiral said:
I think it needed a significant redesign of the air vehicle to reduce costs - it's sort of like a giant Meccano set now. And then a cheaper, more fuel efficient engine than Adour that'll be in production for longer. All very doable at low risk, but still multiple hundreds of £m engineering effort.
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Yes, it makes no economic sense now, there was a window when it might have, but that boat has long sailed.
 
This talk is by Peter Curtis, who led the Aeralis wing redesign work. It gives an overview of the design rationale although at the time he could not show the new layout.

Peter started at BAe Kingston on the P1216, so is clearly a great engineer, and also happened to be one of the three people who fixed the F-35B so that it could work properly in jet-borne flight. He is now at QinetiQ.

View: https://youtu.be/K1_fXe_CdVs?si=bgMOt4p0Su-ykYii
 

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