Show me the money.
I’ve said many times before, I dearly want the Aeralis project to work. I would love to see a successful British start up company break into the market with a brand new training solution.
I just don’t get how it’ll work though.
Touting Aeralis as a solution to the current Hawk problem is inexplicable. Ascent never bought the Hawk T2s. UKGOV did. So where are Ascent getting the money to fund the R&D and production of a new fleet of jet aircraft? It also makes a mockery of the ‘common fuselage’ concept when your customer only needs one type.
Even if the money were there to buy a fleet of Aeralis jet trainers how long would it take to see students launching on a GH1 profile in their shiny new steed? My guess would be that ten years from now would be an incredible achievement. If we’re willing to wait that long now why not just invest in a bunch of T50s or 346s straight off the production line?
My belief is that the Hawks will get sorted in the not too distant future and they will continue as planned (ish) for the next 20+ years. By which point Aeralis will either have found a large scale launch customer and be the global market leader, or circumstances will have changed beyond our current comprehension and a totally new solution will be required. Judging by the way everyone else is going it’ll either be a much higher performance trainer, a 100% simulated training syllabus or a world in which we no longer need to train pilots to get airborne in actual fighters. In any of those situations I’m not sure where Aeralis fits in.
Anyway, please prove me wrong and make me eat my words when Aeralis makes a fortune and saves the RAF in the process.
BV