UK Rapid Capabilities Office hires aircraft design advisors

Project teams of the UK Royal Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) are now working with aircraft design house Aeralis on the Tempest Future Combat Air System (FCAS) and the development of other aircraft, the company announced in a press release on 17 February.

The contract with the Farnborough-based RCO is part of the organisations drive to introduce new and cheaper ways of fast tracking the design of military aircraft under the umbrella of the Tempest FCAS programme.

The multiyear framework agreement with the London-based Aeralis includes ongoing funding for specific research and development work packages. “The initial GBP200,000 [nearly USD279,000] funding is until the end of March 2021 and Aeralis is already in discussion about the next phase within the three-year framework,” a company spokesman told Janes on 16 February

He said the company’s role was more than just providing software tools. “This is the first time that the RCO has selected a non-incumbent aircraft design company to re-examine fundamentally how to design and build military aircraft,” he said. “We are focusing on a whole suite of processes, design tools, policies, and procedures that the RCO will use to understand how better to design and develop future aircraft.”

“Aeralis offers an extremely disruptive and innovative approach to design, modelling, and certification processes in military aerospace,” RCO head Air Commodore Jez Holmes was quoted as saying in the press release. “We are pleased to be working with Aeralis to explore the modular air-system approach to future aircraft certification, design, and development and, in particular, to understand the exploitation potential of Pyramid, our new open mission system architecture.”