I was fortunate on Monday evening to be able to attend the RAeS lecture on Aeralis given by their Strategy Director and former F3 display pilot Archie Neill. Despite the weather it was a surprisingly well attended lecture with many inciteful questions from an interested audience.
My take-aways from the evening are as follows:
Aeralis represents the “last chance saloon” to retain an aerospace capability in the UK. By that I am not ignoring the multitude of smaller projects and programmes currently in progress, but what UK plc loses if there is no Aeralis is the ability to design, develop and produce an aircraft system with the potential to sell/export significant numbers of units around the globe. Even if there are no such programmes after Aeralis, why give up such hard learnt skills to foreign alternatives.
Strikes me as a complete “no-brainer” when the government is effectively being offered a shot at a new trainer with absolutely zero cost to the tax payer for its development. The Qatari wealth fund WILL release the funds and the project starts in earnest the moment the letter of intent to procure is signed. The French DGA have enthusiasm for the project, while in the MoD there seems to be some blinkers and defaulting to trusting in a competition. What seems to be needed is a reincarnation of John Prescott who forcefully banged on the table to overthrow the M346 (if that’s the right number) in favour of the locally produced Hawk T2 back in 2000(ish).
The current UK flying training system is FUBAR’d. It cannot produce the throughput required to meet the steady state needs of the front-line fleets of Typhoon and Lightning II. Witness recent case where Valley instructors had to be seconded back to Marham to ensure there were enough pilots on the boat to ensure validatioIMO there needs a full review (TNA) Training Needs Analysis and not over specifing on the ETS such as was done on the Hawk AJT, it takes far too long to train a Valley QFI/TI/IP/QWI (or whatever they are called, to be competent to instruct all of the available capabilities.
If we accept any of the current alternative fleets we are shackled to them for life. My personal experience of instruction in the US shows very little evolution in their training methods and a 65 year old T38 is bravely hanging on until the arrival of the Red Hawk which is already late and troubled. I do not believe that the US will happily allow units to go to foreign customers until after its own needs are adequately satisfied.
Certification of multiple configurations is not going to be as big an issue as I had previously thought. In this digital age a lot of work has already been done to pave the way to reduce time and cost that has plagued the likes of Typhoon, Chinook and F35 certification and release to service.
Replacing the Red Arrows T1s appears to be the time critical thing, but surely there are interim solutions to fielding a display team to fill the availability gap – for example doing a deal with South Africa to use the 20ish airframe that are currently hangered (this is my own note, not a product of the lecture)
The clock is ticking and I believe the company need to work very quickly and decisively in the lobbying department to get the local and national support of MPs and Ministers.
I came away truly believing the fact that this modular approach is indeed going to be a game changer, but I fear that the opportunity may well be lost if action is not taken soon
Tarnished
Last edited by T28B; 17th January 2026 at 14:52.
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