Scaled Composites ARES

The Scaled Composites ARES, Model 151, is a single-seat demonstrator aircraft whose name stands for Agile Responsive Effective Support. It grew from a 1981 study by two US Army aviators for a low cost battlefield attack aircraft, which Burt Rutan joined to design. The aircraft is a canard with a single Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D turbofan whose intake sits on the left of the nose, balanced by a GAU-12/U 25 mm rotary cannon recessed on the right so that gun recoil lines up with the aircraft's centre of gravity. The fuselage is mostly fibreglass over a foam core, built largely from off-the-shelf aircraft parts. It first flew on February 19, 1990, with test pilot Doug Shane, appeared as a fictional fighter in the film Aces: Iron Eagle III, and has since served as a commercially available research test bed.