ARES: a light attack aircraft that never happened; it only flew in a movie.

- turn rate of 36 degrees per second at 7G
- low-altitude
- close air support
- long endurance
- field performance to operate from roads.

Intriguing design. Simple. Efficient. Survivable. Armored fuel tanks.

The light jet was built around a Pratt & Whitney JT15D turbofan that provides 2,950lbs of thrust and is armed with a General Electric GAU-12/U 25mm five-barrel rotary cannon.

Engine and the inlet are offset eight degrees to port while the fuselage is offset to starboard of the wing centerline

http://nationalinterest.org/bl...never-happened-19939



It only flew in the movies.

Dave Majumdar
March 29, 2017

While the U.S. Air Force’s OA-X program [3] is once again coming to the fore as an alternative to using high-end jet fighters against poorly armed insurgents, the idea is not a new one.

While the last iteration of the concept came in 2008, in earlier years the U.S. Army led the charge to field a new light attack aircraft under the Low Cost Battlefield Attack Aircraft (LCBAA).

Though the program never reached fruition due to political infighting between elements within the Army and the United States Air Force, legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan build the Scaled Model 151 [4] Agile Responsive Effective Supports or ARES demonstrator for the effort using his own money.

“A design study was performed by Rutan Aircraft Factory in 1981 for such an aircraft. Its mission goals were low-altitude, close air support, with long endurance, and with adequate field performance to operate from roads,” as Scaled—now owned by Northrop Grumman—notes on its website.

“Scaled followed up with the concept, and ultimately decided to build a demonstrator aircraft with internal funds. The ARES first flew on February 19, 1990.”

The Ares was a highly innovative design that eschewed high technology for the sake of simplicity and maintainability—not to mention cost.

The light jet was built around a Pratt & Whitney JT15D turbofan that provides 2,950lbs of thrust and is armed with a General Electric GAU-12/U 25mm five-barrel rotary cannon.

One of the unique features of the aircraft is that the engine and the inlet are offset eight degrees to port while the fuselage is offset to starboard of the wing centerline.

The reason for the odd configuration is to ensure that exhaust gasses from the GAU-12/U are not ingested into engine. The unique feature also helps to cancel some of the recoil from the gun.

“During November of 1991, tests of the GAU-12/U gun system installed in ARES were performed, with outstanding results,” as Scaled notes on its website.

Rutan designed the canard configuration aircraft to be easy to fly even without complex fly-by-wire controls. Indeed, the Ares’ flight control systems were completely mechanical and the jet even had a backup mechanical fuel controls for the JT15D engine.

“ARES has flown more than 250 hours, and demonstrated all of its design performance and handling qualities goals, including departure-free handling at full aft stick,” Scaled states.

Nor did the jet’s lightweight and simple construction detract from survivability. It was extremely agile—with turn rate of 36 degrees per second at 7G—and it boasted armored fuel tanks.

Indeed, the rugged aircraft proved almost ideal for its stated mission goals of “low-altitude, close air support, with long endurance, and with adequate field performance to operate from roads.”

But what happened?

The answer is internal politics within the Army and the Air Force killed the program. LCBAA was the brainchild of Army aviators Jim Kreutz and Milo Burroughs for what was then the Army’s High Technology Test Bed at Fort Lewis, Washington, with the blessing of the service’s then Chief of Staff, Gen. Shy Meyers.

For a time, the program enjoyed the support of legendary Air Force Col. John Boyd and Chuck Spinney — who was one of his disciples.

But the program fell apart after Meyers’ retirement as the effort faced stiff resistance from the Air Force — which jealously guarded its prerogative to operate all land-based fixed wing tactical aircraft as stipulated by the so-called Key West Agreement of 1948 (Both Boyd and Spinney were considered radical elements in the Air Force hierarchy).

Meanwhile, elements within the Army—fearing that the LCBAA threatened the Hughes AH-64A Apache helicopter gunship program—also worked to torpedo the Ares project.

Ultimately, they succeeded—the Ares never completed development or entered production.

The sole Ares demonstrator continues to fly as a research aircraft. It even appeared in a movie as the secret Nazi-era Me-263 jet in the atrocity that was Iron Eagle III.

Precursor to the A-10?

quote:

Originally posted by 10X-Shooter:
Precursor to the A-10?

The A-10 entered service in March 1977. First flight was in May 1972.

I know how this was developed by SCALED and will find some video we took shortly after the bird was flown. Typical of Burt, it was developed with his own money without a RFP/RFQ - nada. It sat engineless for decades in the SCALED hangar in Mojave, but now that Northrup owns 100% of SCALED it has been returned to flight status.

Found a bad copy - will look for a better version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg

^^^^^
Wow, thats'a great video; SF brains trust is awesome! I can cope with the sound.

Q: the footage includes the GAU firing (@ 1:48 and 2:05); on firing, is the aircraft stepping to port from recoil, or is that pilot input on the rudder?

Oh I got it; the blast pressure moves the aircraft to the left by design.

quote:

Originally posted by cjevans:
^^^^^
Wow, thats'a great video; SF brains trust is awesome! I can cope with the sound.

Q: the footage includes the GAU firing (@ 1:48 and 2:05); on firing, is the aircraft steeping to port from recoil, or is that pilot input on the rudder?

No yaw induced by the GAU, but it seemed to slow down 50 knots when fired more than a few rounds. It's an awesome gun that SCALED underestimated the power of on the first ground firing. Ares was tied down with ropes, but broke one on the first firing - it slewed hard over one direction and put a few rounds through the Mojave Fire (sheriff?) Dept shack on the field. Chains ensued next firing :-)

The range work shown was China Lake, but no one at SCALED was authorized to fly there or shoot the gun - so a SCALED investor/Board member who was an ex 117 driver (and a Northrop VP) flew it the short distance from Mojave to the Range. So many crazy stories from SCALED those early days :-)

I recall ARES was slightly smaller than proposed production aircraft to allow use of the 25mm GAU-12 instead of the 30mm GAU-8 used on the A10. Since ARES was a private venture, SCALED had to jump through a lot of unfamiliar hoops to acquire/fire the gun, and had to account for every single 25 mm round.

quote:

Originally posted by aileron:
^snip^
Chains ensued next firing :-)

Ha! So it does have a'holey' hysterical history!

The Air Force simply doesn't WANT a low cost 'affordable' ground attack aircraft. If we did, we would still be flying something like the Douglas A-1 Skyraider (VERY rugged piston-engine attack plane designed in WWII, seeing service in Korea and Vietnam). There is no prestige involved in this kind of fighting, and the USAF just loves high speed pointy invisible overcomplicated jets that cost obscene amounts of money.

Back in the 70s, Piper built the Piper PA-48 Enforcer. It was basically this same kind of low cost COIN (counter-insurgency) aircraft, based on the P-51 design. It was apparently a decent design that tested well, but the USAF wasn't interested then, just as they aren't interested now in any such aircraft.

They would rather send a $100 million F-35 against a goat-herder in a mud shack than send something costing a tenth that much. It's an institutional hang-up; one of many I have seen in the past 30 years.

I want one.

quote:

They would rather send a $100 million F-35 against a goat-herder in a mud shack than send something costing a tenth that much

...which may see the Army with armed fixed-wing aircraft again in the foreseeable future.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
I want one.

... the queue grows!

quote:

Originally posted by tanksoldier:

quote:

They would rather send a $100 million F-35 against a goat-herder in a mud shack than send something costing a tenth that much

...which may see the Army with armed fixed-wing aircraft again in the foreseeable future.

I am all for this, but I don't ever see it happening.

IMO, the USAF would fight tooth and nail against the Army having a significant fixed-wing capability, even if it's for a mission the USAF doesn't really seem to care much about.

They don't want to do CAS/close support, and they don't want anybody else to do it, either. That may be an overly-pessimistic assessment of the current situation, but it's the way I see it.

This aircraft is so smartly designed and inexpensive to operate, the Air Farce could never accept it into their inventory.

quote:

Originally posted by aileron:
I know how this was developed by SCALED and will find some video we took shortly after the bird was flown. Typical of Burt, it was developed with his own money without a RFP/RFQ - nada. It sat engineless for decades in the SCALED hangar in Mojave, but now that Northrup owns 100% of SCALED it has been returned to flight status.

Found a bad copy - will look for a better version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg

Burt Rutan was a genius, very creative, imaginative, designer of very unique airplanes.

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:

quote:

Originally posted by tanksoldier:

quote:

They would rather send a $100 million F-35 against a goat-herder in a mud shack than send something costing a tenth that much

...which may see the Army with armed fixed-wing aircraft again in the foreseeable future.

I am all for this, but I don't ever see it happening.

IMO, the USAF would fight tooth and nail against the Army having a significant fixed-wing capability, even if it's for a mission the USAF doesn't really seem to care much about.

They don't want to do CAS/close support, and they don't want anybody else to do it, either. That may be an overly-pessimistic assessment of the current situation, but it's the way I see it.

I would have agreed and bet on this 100% before the last election. Now I'm wouldn't be so sure.

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:

quote:

Originally posted by tanksoldier:

quote:

They would rather send a $100 million F-35 against a goat-herder in a mud shack than send something costing a tenth that much

...which may see the Army with armed fixed-wing aircraft again in the foreseeable future.

I am all for this, but I don't ever see it happening.

IMO, the USAF would fight tooth and nail against the Army having a significant fixed-wing capability, even if it's for a mission the USAF doesn't really seem to care much about.

They don't want to do CAS/close support, and they don't want anybody else to do it, either. That may be an overly-pessimistic assessment of the current situation, but it's the way I see it.

That isn't overly-pessimistic, it's the sad truth. I think the USMC only got away with insisting on having their own CAS (and everything else) because they are so small (plus the nature of expeditionary ops).

Turning fixed-wing CAS over to the Army would make the most operational sense. AF would stick to strategic air missions and air superiority.

Wiki link

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...aled_Composites_ARES

quote:

They don't want to do CAS/close support, and they don't want anybody else to do it, either. That may be an overly-pessimistic assessment of the current situation, but it's the way I see it.

True... BUT: The military branches have to remain mission-relevant.

The Army turned Fort Irwin, where we used to go fight "Russians" into Afghanistan where we now go fight Hadjis.

They lightened up the heavy mechanized forces, they introduced Strykers, they pre-positioned divisions-worth of equipment aboard ships. All this with the goal of becoming more rapidly deployable, and more easily sustainable, and thus relevant to the current conflicts.

The Air Force is NOT doing that. They're repeating Vietnam: Expensive aircraft designed to deliver nukes to Moscow are dropping dumb iron bombs on peasants in a rice field.

We need F22s just like we still need M1A2s... but the AF better find some Strykers to add to the mix.

quote:

AF would stick to strategic air missions and air superiority.

The AF really_should_ become part of the Army again... air superiority and strategic bombing are part of the land warfare mission.

Returned to flight status? Wonder if they are considering on submitting this back into contention with AF?