This means that the same aircraft could be configured into a basic trainer with straight wings, an advanced trainer with swept wings with one or two engine options, thanks to the modular power ‘egg’. Instead, Aeralis features a ‘common core’ fuselage (CCF) to which different wings, undercarriage, tails and power units can then be fitted. With the Aeralis Jet, Crawford has turned the traditional airliner manufacturing idea of fuselage size options on its head. One person who pondered that question was the founder and CEO of British start-up, Aeralis, Tristan Crawford, who first revealed his modular DartJet concept, as it was then called, in the pages of AEROSPACE in 2019. So why has this never been applied to military aircraft? Enter AeralisĪeralis has evolved since it was first unveiled as the DartJet.

The result is far lower operating costs for airlines than a multitude of individual types with different training, support and maintenance requirements.

The key then, that the commercial aircraft industry has learned over decades, is that a common wing, tail, nose and flight deck can be swapped for shorter or longer fuselages, or different engine options to meet customer requirements for seats and range. However, what if an air force could ‘flex’ its training capacity to meet surges and lulls in the pipeline by adding more basic trainers, when needed, or boosting the LIFT/OCU phase – with the same core aircraft? This is nothing new in the civil airline world where various sizes of airliners within the same family allow airlines to ‘right size’ aircraft with demand, putting aircraft with fewer seats on less busy routes, then switching to larger, longer models with more seats as demand increases. Too few pilots at one phase, too many at another or groundings of aircraft, due to technical problems can create bottlenecks that build up and ripple through the system, leaving too few or too many suitable aircraft, whether they be basic, advanced or lead-in fighter (LIFT) trainers. It will have escaped no one’s attention that managing and optimising military flying training systems can be a tough and unique challenge. TIM ROBINSON FRAeS provides an update on this innovative project that could well revolutionise how military aircraft are built, acquired and operated. After adding new partners and undertaking a design review, the UK’s modular military aircraft developer, Aeralis, is now gathering momentum down the runway.

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