Aircraft Designer Rolls Out New Ares Jet Fighter

Aircraft designer Burt Rutan rolled out and demonstrated his latest creation Monday--an experimental jet fighter with such potential missions as shooting down enemy helicopters or drug-laden cargo planes.

The aircraft was not paid for by the Pentagon and its design was not dictated by the military, explaining why it defies many of the government’s most important conventions such as complexity, high cost and big bureaucracy.

Outfitted in cowboy boots and a blazer, Rutan stood in the bright Mojave Desert sunlight Monday and said he hopes that the aircraft will prove the concept that a small aircraft can be a potent weapon.

But Rutan is hardly regarded as an outsider within his industry, judging by the group of aeronautical experts who journeyed to his small hangar at the Mojave Airport to see the plane. It included Northrop B-2 bomber designer John Cashen, representatives of several major aircraft firms and Maj. Gen. John P. Schoeppner, commander of the Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

“I am really excited by new technology, especially when Burt Rutan is involved,” Schoeppner said.

But Schoeppner was not there as a customer officially representing the Air Force. Like others, he came just to see the newest design by Rutan, whose reputation has only grown since he designed the record-breaking Voyager aircraft that flew around the world in 1986 without refueling.

Reputation or not, Rutan faces a difficult road in selling the Pentagon bureaucracy on an aircraft that it had no part in designing.

“It faces tremendous potential hurdles,” said one defense official Monday. “Anytime you have somebody with new and creative ideas, it is hard for the bureaucracy to accept that.”

Rutan has worked on the aircraft for nearly four years at his tiny Scaled Composites Inc., but he spent under $2 million to design and build the aircraft, mostly out of fiberglass and carbon epoxy composites.

Called the Ares, an acronym for agile responsive effective support, the aircraft boasts a number of unusual features, including an asymmetrical design.

The jet engine air inlet is positioned on the right side of the aircraft and the engine is canted 8 degrees from the center line of the aircraft. And the cockpit is positioned three inches to the left of the center line of the fuselage.

Rutan eventually will mount a 25-millimeter cannon internally on the right side of the aircraft, thereby preventing cannon smoke from being ingested into the engine intake on the left side. Smoke ingestion is a major problem on combat aircraft.

It is designed to fly at altitudes as low as 100 feet, avoiding ground fire and attack by more sophisticated jet fighters, Rutan said. It is designed to land in austere air fields and even on roads if airports are blown up.

The Ares has a maximum level flight speed of 460 miles per hour, powered by its single commercial Pratt & Whitney turbofan engine.

The aircraft has a gross weight of 6,500 pounds, of which 33% is fuel, a particularly high percentage for a fighter. It is 28.6 feet long and has a wing span of 35 feet.

Although his designs have gained wide acceptance within aeronautical circles, his own company remains comparatively small and continues to concentrate only on small development programs.

Rutan’s company is owned by Wyman-Gordon, a Worcester, Mass., forging company that acquired it from Beech Aircarft in early 1989. Rutan said ownership changed when James Walsh, Beech chief executive, went to Wyman-Gordon.

In addition to the Ares, Rutan is working on a half-dozen other research projects, including a business jet, parts for an experimental spacecraft and work for a number of confidential customers.

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