Scaled Composites ARES

The Scaled Composites ARES is a demonstrator aircraft built by the company Scaled Composites. ARES is an acronym for Agile Responsive Effective Support.

In 1981 the United States Army requested that a study be undertaken for a LCBAA or low cost battlefield attack aircraft, and Burt Rutan decided to join this study, and also to design an aircraft to meet the requirements. The original layout suggested by this study was that of a low wing, cantilever configuration, aircraft powered by a pusher turboprop, and also suggested the aircraft be built around a 30 mm chain gun.

After the study Burt Rutan went back to Scaled Composites and started tossing around the idea of producing such an aircraft. In 1985 he began taking these ideas to the drawing board, and decided to produce a demonstrator aircraft, which was built in 1986. By this time the aircraft had changed significantly: it had kept the low wing cantilever configuration, but now had a single Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D-5 turbofan engine rather than the originally proposed turboprop, a GAU-12/U 25 mm rotary barreled cannon (similar to the 30 mm gun made famous by the A-10 Warthog) mounted on the aircraft right side under the cockpit. This configuration meant that due to the gasses produced by the gun, the aircraft could not have an engine intake on the right side, which led to the curious and possibly dangerous single intake mounted on the aircraft left side rather than underneath.

This aircraft became known as the ARES, and first flew on February 19, 1990, piloted by Scaled Composites test pilot Doug Shane. Since then it has flown more than 250 hours, and met all of its original design specifications for performance and range. In 1991 under US Air Force contract, the ARES' 25 mm cannon was installed and put through its paces; during the test the cannon performed extremely well.

The ARES has since drawn a lot of attention from the U.S. Navy and Air Force, but it remains a private project. After an appearance in the movie Aces: Iron Eagle III as an Me 263 fighter, the aircraft has become a research test bed available to any one wishing to pay to test new technologies with it. Meanwhile, the aircraft remains in storage at the Mojave Spaceport.

References

• Scaled Composites company web page about ARES
• The Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft by David Donald