AERALIS RESPONDS TO THE UK DEFENCE SELECT COMMITTEE’S REPORT ON THE FUTURE AVIATION CAPABILITIES ENQUIRY

23 January 2025

The UK government’s Defence Committee published its final report from 2024’s “Future Aviation Capabilities” inquiry (at which AERALIS founder and CEO, Tristan Crawford gave testimony) earlier this week.

The government agreed to complete the inquiry and publish the findings as the original timeframe was interrupted by the general election. However, this report also takes into consideration “significant developments” that have taken place in the interim, and chooses to centre its focus squarely on the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP).

The AERALIS flexible air system was conceived to address many of the themes repeated throughout the report, from affordability to sovereign industrial strength; from improved pilot training to an evolvable capability that can keep pace with future air combat threats. We’ve highlighted and responded to some of those points below:

Maintaining pace with emerging threats:

“GCAP is a global programme, but it is also a national endeavour which offers great opportunity for the UK’s security and prosperity. Inevitably at this early stage, there are a range of important issues which cannot yet be addressed. These include the programme’s likely resilience and capability against emerging threats such as hypersonic and directed energy weapons, advanced electronic warfare, and autonomous systems; its integration with existing and future assets, including drones, satellites, and surface assets; and its flexibility and adaptability to technological advances and changing operational requirements over its expected lifespan. All these issues will remain of considerable interest to the Committee, and to Parliament.”

AERALIS: GCAP is a crewed platform. It will require pilots trained to operate in a more complex tactical and technologically contested environment than ever before, where the nature of threats is evolving at an extreme pace. AERALIS was conceived with this need in mind from the outset. Its open systems architecture, integrated digital enterprise and powerful onboard computing power – combined with its unique modular airframe – ensure air forces have an adaptable capability ‘out of the box’. If GCAP’s potential is to be fully realised, it must have a commensurately capable training system to deliver appropriately prepared crews.

Future training requirements:

“The Hawk trainer aircraft has been a UK defence export success story, but with domestic production lines closing four years ago the skills and manufacturing capacity which had built up over decades will prove challenging and costly to regenerate. We recognise that innovative training solutions, including modular aircraft and synthetics, may offer new opportunities for industry; but we find the failure to capitalise on the success of Hawk remarkably short-sighted and deeply regrettable.”

AERALIS: Tristan Crawford’s vision for AERALIS is to re-ignite the impetus lost in the wake of the venerable Hawk, and build back a sovereign renown for advanced jet training capability, designed and built here in Britain.

Workforce and industrial capacity:


“Building and maintaining a skilled workforce will be crucial to GCAP’s success. With the defence industry facing fierce competition from other sectors for skilled workers, it is essential that a holistic approach is taken to recruitment and retention. GCAP offers a welcome opportunity to attract new talent into the UK’s combat air industry, but the focus cannot just be on the recruitment of new apprentices into industry primes.”

AERALIS: AERALIS’s partnership approach enables rapid industrial scale-up through a UK-based enterprise of established aerospace expertise. This not only helps to retain essential skills and experience but provides the necessary commitment for long-term investment in new skills development – attracting talent into an exciting world-leading programme at the cutting edge of aerospace and digital innovation.

Sovereignty:


“If delivered as planned, GCAP will enable the UK to retain national sovereignty in combat air, providing a vital military capability in an increasingly volatile world. We also recognise the opportunities the programme brings to deepen the UK’s relationships with its allies and to shore up defence industrial capacity.”

AERALIS: GCAP alone cannot provide the sovereign combat air capability of which the report speaks, because its success will be so dependent on the training system that provides its crews. AERALIS, as a parallel UK programme, offers the only way in which this vision will be truly realised, while bolstering our defence industrial capacity with homegrown talent and innovation. AERALIS has already made groundbreaking strides in digital innovation, including being the first aircraft to be developed to the RAF’s PYRAMID open systems architecture framework; the development of its Smart Integrated Digital Enterprise, a centralised and perpetual digital thread for the AERALIS programme, aircraft, crews and industrial partners; and validation of digital certification.

Affordability and cost control:


“Whilst progress to date has been positive, previous multilateral defence programmes have frequently seen costs spiral and delays pile up and GCAP will have to break the mould it if is to achieve its ambitious target date.”

AERALIS: ‘Breaking the (unsustainable) cost curve’ of new military aircraft development is at the heart of the AERALIS proposition, and the reason why we took a modular approach to the air system. For generations, we have seen time and money lost in the development of aircraft that ultimately deliver a very narrow band of capability, which is thereafter very costly to update and upgrade to maintain its relevance to the evolving battlespace. AERALIS has shown a way to get increased capability through the pursuit of affordability, rather than as a compromise.

While AERALIS acknowledges the potential for GCAP to deliver both defence capability and much-needed industrial vigour to the UK, it will inevitably fail to reach its full promise on both counts if these expectations are not also key drivers for its consideration of the training system that will be needed to generate GCAP crews.

In 2022, the UK had more F-35s than pilots to fly them. If GCAP proceeds without due holistic consideration to the advanced jet training system programme that needs to run parallel to it, we could see Tempest aircraft similarly gathering dust waiting for crews.