Digital Engineering Modular Aircraft at AERALIS

AERALIS is an innovator in the military jet market working toward developing the world’s first modular military aircraft system. With one common core fuselage in combination with different wing, engine, power plant pod, empennage, and cockpit configurations, an AERALIS aircraft will be able to fly different missions and have different performance characteristics with a single system.
In this episode of the Next Generation Design podcast, host Greg Arnot welcomes two AERALIS engineers to the show: Charlie Jones, Digital Lead and Digital Program Manager and Callum Watson, Lead PLM and Design Tools Engineer.
In this episode, you will learn more about how the aerospace industry is growing and evolving at an incredible rate, how AERALIS implements its AERSIDE philosophy, and the “secret sauce” for AERALIS when it comes to overcoming design challenges.
What you’ll learn in this episode of the Next Generation Design podcast:
- The importance and usefulness of the Digital Thread (06:43)
- The advantages of Model Based System Engineering (09:50)
- How AERALIS utilizes Siemens digital tools (12:46)
- A breakdown of the design process at AERALIS (17:07)
- Some of the design challenges currently facing the aerospace industry (18:53)
You can always listen to the Next Generation Design podcast right here, or wherever you do podcasts.
Read the summary or watch the video version of this episode: Revolutionizing the defense industry with modular aircraft | The design process and digital thread at AERALIS
Listen to or read the next episode of the Next Generation Design podcast: Voyaging to the Moon: Rocket Design with Firefly Aerospace
Listen to or read the previous episode of the Next Generation Design podcast: Designing Formula SAE Cars with Rensselaer Motorsport
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Charlie Jones, Digital Lead and Digital Program Manager
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Podcast transcript for Digital Engineering Modular Aircraft at AERALIS
Charlie Jones: It’s the application of digital processes throughout the entire lifecycle of a system, from concept to manufacture, operation, certification and disposal, but all connected via a single source of truth—I think that’s the key. That’s what digital engineering really means to us at AERALIS. It’s not just digital design, it’s not just digital procurement, it’s the whole lifecycle of our aircraft system that will be digitally developed, and it will be connected by a single source of truth.
Greg Arnot: You’re listening to another episode of the Next Generation Design podcast. I’m your host, Greg Arnot. On today’s episode, I’m joined by two engineers at AERALIS, a UK-based aviation and aerospace component manufacturing company that aims to reshape air forces with new levels of integration, configurability, and sustainability. Before we begin, let’s meet today’s guests, Charlie Jones and Callum Watson. Charlie, can you tell our listeners a bit about AERALIS?
Charlie Jones: AERALIS is an innovator in the military jet market, and we are developing the world’s first modular military aircraft system. You have one fuselage—or common core fuselage—with different wing, engine, power plant pod, empennage, and cockpit configurations, which allows the aircraft to fly different missions and have different performance characteristics. One system, many missions, is the idea.
Greg Arnot: ‘Empennage’ isn’t a word you hear every day… Can you explain that to our listeners?
Charlie Jones: Yeah, now you’re testing my aerospace master’s. The empennage is just the rear section of an aircraft; it includes the elevator and the vertical tailplane.
Greg Arnot: Thanks for that. And what does your job entail?
Charlie Jones: I’m the Digital Lead and Digital Program Manager. I’m responsible for ensuring that the business has the right digital tools at the right time and at the right price to develop, manufacture, certify, and operate the world’s first modular military aircraft system. So, I plan the program and oversee its delivery for all things digital at AERALIS.
Greg Arnot: I’m curious: what got you into aerospace engineering?
Charlie Jones: I wanted to be a fighter pilot as a kid, as I think a lot of children do. Unfortunately, as you see I wear glasses, so that’s the only thing that ruled me out. But I’ve always loved planes; I’m fascinated by humans’ ability to fly. Maths and physics were enjoyable subjects for me at school, so it felt like a logical subject to study at university. I wasn’t in it straightaway; I went and worked in a tech company in London but saw the opportunity to work at AERALIS and grabbed it. A company like AERALIS doesn’t come around very often, and an opportunity like this to work at AERALIS doesn’t come up very often either, so I jumped at the chance.
Greg Arnot: A real childhood dream come true, then. Callum, can you share a bit about your role at AERALIS and how you became interested in the aerospace industry?
Callum Watson: I’m the Lead PLM and Design Tools Engineer. PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management. Here, we use Siemens Teamcenter. That’s the configuration of that to support all of what Charlie just said as part of our digital engineering team. Then, the integration of all the design tools we use — CAD, CFD, structural analysis, all that kind of stuff. I develop all that and support the engineering development team by empowering them with digital engineering. Unlike Charlie and a lot of children, I didn’t dream of being a pilot. Watching films like “Apollo 11” and “The Dambusters,” many people saw romanticism in the pilot role, but I was more attracted to the science-y roles of the engineers in the background. So, I worked hard at school and university to realize that, I was equally interested in science and maths. Now, I find myself a member of a small team on one of these dream projects that everyone listening could have dreamed of. I’ve always wanted to be around aircraft; my mum used to take me to Heathrow to see Concorde take off and such, so I’ve been around aircraft firmly.
Greg Arnot: Over the past few years, it seems that advancements in aerospace technology have come at a record pace. What has it been like to see that progress firsthand?
Charlie Jones: It’s really changed, actually, quite amazingly. Callum and I were reflecting; we’ve only worked at AERALIS in the last two to three years. In that time, there have been some major external events, which have really driven some changes. Obviously, conflicts around the world have driven an increased focus on national readiness and capability in aerospace. So, making sure that, particularly in the defense world, every country has the ability and the capability ready when it needs to do what it needs to do. We’ve seen the need for whole platforms to adapt to changing requirements; the requirements keep changing, technology keeps changing, and platforms have to be able to keep up with that. That’s really driving the need for digital engineering in aerospace as a whole. Aircraft are designed about 20 years before they land on the market in some cases, and by that point, the requirements and technology have completely changed. So, there’s a real push to keep up with that change and reduce the period from ideation to launch.
Greg Arnot: I wonder if you can expand on that last part just a bit. What, exactly, does digital engineering mean to you at AERALIS?
Callum Watson: To me, it’s efficiency. When I came out of university, I had this expectation that the industry was using all the cutting-edge things, and everything was sharp, and I thought I was going to walk into this new space. I was surprised to find it’s still quite document-centric, especially in the certification space, document-centric engineering programs. So, digital engineering, to me, is going past that and stopping sending emails and lack of configuration, but really is that digital thread that’s efficient; it allows us to have clear tasking, it allows us to collaborate and assure we’re on the right thing. It also allows us to be innovative. We’ve got this opportunity to try new technologies and apply stuff to the engineering space. It’s all about really AI and ML—those kinds of buzzwords—and allows us to be new, efficient, and exciting. What do you think, Charlie?
Charlie Jones: That’s one take. I was going to say it’s the application of digital processes throughout the entire lifecycle of a system, from concept to manufacture, operation, certification,t and disposal, but all connected via a single source of truth. I think that’s the key. That’s what digital engineering really means to us at AERALIS. It’s not just digital design; it’s not just digital procurement; it’s the whole lifecycle of our aircraft system that will be digitally developed, and it will be connected by a single source of truth. That’s what it means to us. But it does also mean efficiency.
Callum Watson: Digital thread enables all that kind of stuff.
Greg Arnot: Can you elaborate on the usefulness of the entire digital thread?
Callum Watson: It provides that powerful assurance that people know what requirements they’re working to, so they can design the geometry to those requirements. When a change happens, it’s rippled and notified. So, that individual can modify based on those requirements. That assurance continues down from the CAD to the simulation link. So, that right bit of CAD that’s going through its own lifecycle has a stamp to say that it’s good for simulation, and we can go and simulate that. So, we’re not doing nugatory work; we’re working on something that’s valid to be validated and verified. Any changes that do happen ripple, so everyone in the chain knows that they’re working to the sure thing. That’s really important for us to realize that our aircraft needs to go on its first flight in the next two to three years; we need to move quickly. We can’t afford to be undertaking simulations on the wrong bit of kit. It needs to be assured we need to be efficient, and the digital thread allows us to realize that. We’re using it.
Greg Arnot: Fantastic. During discussions between our companies, I’ve heard about AERSIDE. Can you tell our listeners about what AERSIDE is and its benefits?
Charlie Jones: It stands for the AERALIS Smart Integrated Digital Enterprise. Really what it means is it’s our implementation of digital engineering; it’s an approach, it’s a philosophy, and it’s the actual toolsets and functionality that we deliver. So, we have some key principles of AERSIDE, and they’re things like “start integrated, stay integrated, single source of truth.” We try not to duplicate data anywhere in the system. What it means is that our whole enterprise will be digital, all our processes will be enforced digitally, all our data will be stored digitally, and our aircraft will be designed, certified, and manufactured, all using digital processes. That delivers an untold amount of benefits. When we get into AERSIDE and explain that, everyone’s eyes light up and they go, “Oh, but you could do this.” And you say, “Yeah, absolutely, you could, and we will. We absolutely will.” We can work with manufacturers or designers anywhere in the world because they can all have access to our live design environment. We can take the digital models and the requirements using MBSE, our digital system design, and put it into an optimizing tool that comes out with an optimized wing design because that’s all linked. When we start to manufacture, we know exactly why a part lives there, so we know if there’s a different part or not that we can use to sub in and out if that’s what we might want to do. We can control the torque that goes into each nut being tightened with digital tools. That’s all linked back and tracked to our head of quality. You can do so much. When you get into the real-world operation stage,you can optimize your fleets because you know exactly the life and the operation cycles of each different aircraft part, you can track the maintenance—it’s an untold amount of abilities if you have a true digital twin that comes all the way back to the digital development of the aircraft. From day one, we’ve been digital, and we will be digital forever.
Greg Arnot: Forever and ever! Thank you for that, Charlie. I’d like to talk more about Model-Based Systems Engineering. Can you explain MBSE technology and some of the advantages it brings?
Callum Watson: Systems Engineering itself is ancient, really. You can look back at Systems Engineering being developed from the 1600s onwards. In terms of Model-Based Systems Engineering, the principle that we’re using at AERALIS, the Arcadia Method, has existed since I was about nine years old; it was developed in 2007. The adoption of that into industry, I think, is relatively new. So, that’s where we start there. Of course, we’re applying that today at AERALIS. How we’re using it is a systems modeling approach to support all kinds of problem-solving. So, I see it as a method of breaking down a problem at an operational level and then going into more detail at functional, logical, and physical levels. We’re applying it on the aircraft, but not just the aircraft; we’re applying it to our business operations. We could be applying an MBSE approach to the extent of our maybe electrical subsystem, but also how we manage certification and the administration behind that. So, we’re doing the same kind of Model-Based Systems Engineering approach, not just on an engineering product, which I think is why we’re quite different. So, we’re using a well-defined method on that, but in a slightly different way.
Charlie Jones: Just to add to that, Greg, I think Systems Engineering is just the process through which you design, develop, operate, and manage systems. There are a few different ways or approaches Callum described. Traditionally, that would be done or was done with documents or drawings, like real paper-based articles. MBSE is just the development of digital models, asan evolution of that. It’s much like CAD is Computer-Aided Design; it’s just the digital next step of how we used to design on paper and use drawings. It’s just an elevation of that. As Cal said, it’s not that new; it’s very rarely applied to a system as large as AERALIS, though. The models get big, and I think we will be driving some of the development of the processes as we apply it to a system like AERALIS.
Greg Arnot: Callum, Charlie, I’m curious: where and how were you introduced to CAD software? And what led you to choose NX?
Callum Watson: CAD software probably begins back at university for me as a humble aerospace engineer. At the time, we were using SolidWorks, and that was where I started with CAD. By myself, I’m not a designer; I’m a PLM and design tools integrator. So, I interface with NX from an integration into PLM perspective and set up the tools for an engineering team. AERALIS picked NX because of the openness of Siemens to collaborate with us. From a general point of view, we’re great. NX is a tried and tested, proven CAD tool for the aerospace industry. It was selected before I joined AERALIS, and I walked into inheriting NX as a system. So, I’ve been working on that for two years now, configuring it to our designers’ process requirements, managing the Bill of Materials through that, and supporting the development of configuration management, too.
Greg Arnot: And can you highlight for our listeners how you’re collaborating with Siemens?
Charlie Jones: We work with Siemens very closely. The approach we take with a lot of our partners is collaborative, and digital tools help us to collaborate. We’re working with Siemens and their professional services, the implementing team, in a much more agile way than I think has traditionally been done. Siemens is really supportive of that. We very quickly identify new capabilities that we need, we design processes, and we want to build and test them out. Because the only way we can future-proof those and make sure they work is just with lots of robust testing and experimentation. That’s the best way for us. We aren’t sitting with the Siemens team and giving them a big set of requirements and saying, “Go away for six months. Build this, come back, and we’ll test it.” Every week, we’re designing something, building it, testing it, changing it a bit more, and working in that real agile sprint. We are bounded by big milestones, and so we do a hybrid approach to make sure we’re delivering for the program. But that collaboration and that different way of working—we talk to Siemens daily. Every day, we’re messaging each other. We’re asking for trial licenses to try out new technology and try different methodologies. We’re having different solutions proposed, and we’re trialing those. It’s been great, and the rate at which we’ve been able to launch, deploy, and roll out functionality has been incredible, and long may it continue. But it’s been a slight cultural shift for a few people to work like that. It’s not a traditional way of working.
Greg Arnot: In addition to NX, are you using any other Siemens tools at AERALIS?
Charlie Jones: I believe it’s Teamcenter, NX, SMW (System Modeling Workbench), Simcenter, Polarion. We’ve just started using Test Lab and the Physical Test Management System. We think we will start using Opcenter fairly soon as well when we get into manufacturing execution. But that’s what I think we’re using at the moment.
Greg Arnot: I spend a lot of time in the mechanical domain myself. From that side of things, how does NX help AERALIS solve challenges?
Callum Watson: We’ve set up a managed NX environment. So, that’s what I do—we still have that integration with NX and PLM. That allows our collaboration with our design partners. So, all of the mock-ups that people might have seen lately that have gone out to Doha and all of our Common Core fuselage have all been realized through and integrated with the Teamcenter NX platform. This has allowed us to collaborate with our Southampton-based design partners, Hamble Aerostructures, and work collaboratively. The design team based in Bristol and the design team based in Southampton have been able to work on the same live digital mock-up through the power of NX. Through its integration, it’s linked to our requirements management tool, Teamcenter, where we manage our requirements. We’ve got that direct digital thread between requirements and geometry that’s enabling our geometric-based requirement validation and verification. So, you’re starting to see there what digital engineering means to us: it is a thread and collaboration and efficiency and working on the same stuff. It’s not emails, and so the direct result of that is, actually, we’ve already produced a bit of fuselage for demonstration purposes. Albeit that’s not something that’s going flying, but there’s something physical that’s coming out from the NX toolset.
Charlie Jones: I think NX has got some really cool features that help us solve challenges like maintainability. We’re routing path mapping, which is quite cool: how a battery, for instance, comes in and out of the aircraft is a maintenance task. So, we’re making sure that we’re baking in maintainability to our aircraft from day one. NX has tools that let us do that, which is pretty cool. You can mock the view of a pilot from their eyes, and you can move their head up and down, and you’ll be able to see what they see in the cockpit. So, you can map out the anthropometrics.
Callum Watson: Thankfully, Siemens NX has exactly the type of certified human models that we’ll be getting in our aircraft, so we can get an idea of how those people react in the cockpit. The real extremes we’re taking into consideration modern airforce—so the largest gentleman and the smallest female in the cockpit, ensuring that they can reach the rudder pedals, touch the large air display, reach the active throttle, and that kind of thing. So, NX allows us to design with that in mind and get inside the eyes of those models. So, that’s a really cool bit of functionality.
Greg Arnot: Callum, we’ve talked quite a bit about the technology you’re using throughout the design process, but tell us, what is the actual overall design process like at AERALIS? Where and how does it start?
Callum Watson: AERALIS operates as a thin prime. So, in the same way that we’re modular in terms of a physical aircraft, and we’re modular in the way of our avionics systems, we’re modular in organization. We sit as an experienced design team with a typical chief engineer and heads of systems. We maintain design authority with a very much requirements-driven approach. We operate within prime, so we’ve got design partners, like Hamble Aerostructures, who are designing and manufacturing a bit of our aircraft, so our Common Core fuselage. So, we collaborate with them in a one-team methodology. They designed that bit of kit for us. Our system design is supported by other engineering firms in Bristol. So, we’re doing bits of design together as one team and collaborating in the same space on the same stuff at a high cadence. It goes through a typical design maturity. We’ve gone through an FCR recently, and we’re moving towards a PDR. So, we’re not trying to reinvent the engineering wheel; we’ve got a very experienced team applying typical engineering processes, but being in a digital enterprise enables us to work with design partners all over the place.
Greg Arnot: Can you explain FCR and PDR for us?
Callum Watson: Final Concept Review. That’s where we’ve bought off a concept. Some of you may have seen that on some of our brandings. Then, PDR is our Preliminary Design Review. We’ve just gotten past that concept and going into more and more detail and working collaboratively with the industry.
Charlie Jones: There are just gateway reviews on a traditional large system development lifecycle. You start from a concept idea and you have some initial requirements, and you develop a design, you check it meets your requirements initially, and then you get into more detail, and you check again. They’re just good milestones that we use.
Greg Arnot: There are quite a few challenges facing the aerospace industry at the moment. What have you seen firsthand?
Charlie Jones: Aircraft systems are becoming far more complex; they take longer to develop, and they need far more resources and a bigger industrial base. That means there are far fewer options available. If you look at 40-50 years ago, the number of different aircraft air forces were flying compared to today; there’s a real disparity there. That presents its own challenges—there are just fewer options. The requirements for the latest generation of aircraft are changing so quickly that they need to be replicated in the trainer platforms. Pilots have to be able to train on a platform that is like the aircraft they’re going to fly. But the investment isn’t always there in the trainer platforms, so they need to really be able to adjust to those new requirements and be adaptable. I think, in general—and we’re seeing it quite a lot—traditional companies are wrestling with their legacy IT estates. Big companies have seen a lot of acquisitions as well, and that makes it much harder to manage an IT estate and try to keep up with the new technology and the need for innovation, which often need digital processes to achieve that. You can’t do a lot of innovation at that pace without digital processes. Applying those processes on a legacy IT estate is very difficult. I think that’s a challenge that people will wrestle with for a while.
Callum Warson: Just picking up on Charlie’s comment about the complexity of aircraft systems, this leads to another challenge I think the aerospace industry faces as a whole, which is that certification is getting more expensive as a result. So, I fear that may be reducing the appetite for people to try new things, and limiting how eVTOLs are progressing, and that kind of thing. So, a solution to reducing expense in certification, I think, is something that’s really important. Because of that expense of certification, reduction in the risk appetite is not very exciting because it means there are fewer cool projects that actually make it. So, we’re quite keen on putting that kind of thing behind us and bashing through in this space. On certification itself, lots of programs are still stuck in quite document-centric certification programs, which are inefficient and have such a huge cost and human admin burden. So, trying to ensure safety through that, and I think that I’ve seen that through industry, can be difficult. So, that’s something we’re looking to solve.
Greg Arnot: Are any of those particular challenges unique to AERALIS?
Charlie Jones: Conversely, we don’t have a legacy IT estate, which is lovely in a lot of respects; it means we can adopt the Siemens toolset wholeheartedly and benefit from all the new functionality. But what it does mean is that we’re trying to build an organization at the same time as building processes, toolsets, and an aircraft system that can be recognized by a regulator and can be certified. It’s an opportunity because it means we can use digital. We have hired really experienced and incredible individuals from across the aerospace industry to bring their best practice knowledge and apply it to a new way, which I think is the best of both worlds. But that’s obviously a unique challenge for AERALIS; there aren’t many new aerospace companies. I think the other one is delivering that novel technology. It’s a modular aircraft that has never been—at least, not in the military sense—achieved before. Delivering that while reducing the technological risk, we need to build an aircraft, and we have to get it to market and we’ve got to certify it. We can’t build whole new systems for everything. So, how we balance the need for getting it to market, getting it flying, and getting it certified while actually developing a whole new type of aircraft, that’s a challenge that we face. But we’re drawing on the expertise across the UK and across the world, and finding there are solutions to most of those challenges that do exist. We were surprised.
Callum Watson: Another challenge out of that is that we’re tapping into SMEs across the world, not at one specific place. So, one of the challenges we have is the fact that AERALIS is the first whole British aircraft program in nearly 50 years—in fact, 50 years this year. So, that kind of industry that once was in the UK of Avro, Vickers, and all these big companies has kind of gone. So, we’re tapping into industry across the world.
Greg Arnot: From an AERALIS standpoint, what do you do differently when overcoming challenges? What is the company’s secret sauce?
Callum Watson: I think when we try to overcome a challenge, we start from a very theoretical standpoint—what’s the philosophy we want to apply? And make sure we’re thinking about it from a big-picture point of view. It’s really easy to get into a point solution problem. If I have a specific challenge, let’s say I’m struggling to send another engineer an analysis file for whatever reason, and I can’t do it. If I identify a solution that just does that one thing, then it does that one thing very well. But over time, over three years, I ended up with 50 of those solutions, which means my software estate is huge, my license bill is huge, and my technical debt is really big. I actually don’t have a single source of truth; I’ve got lots of different sources of different truths, which is a real problem. I think that’s how you see a lot of complex legacy IT estates develop: by not looking at the end goal across the whole process, the whole organization, and thinking about how you future-proof that and how you make good decisions. So, we try to start really philosophically; what’s the end goal? What’s the strategy? Does this align with our strategy? Does any other part of the organization experience similar problems? So, an example would be that’s just the sharing of data. Everyone, actually, at AERALIS will experience that problem in some format because that’s how our business operates: you communicate and share data. So, how can we come up with a solution that enables everyone in the organization to share data in the way that they need, and it gets you to a completely different place? It massively changes all your processes or solutions. I think it takes a bit longer to develop, but the return on investment is so much greater, and it really future-proofs. So, that’s what we tried to do with part numbering. One of the challenges was we needed a part numbering system, obviously. So, we adopted an initial part numbering system, which solved the problem of needing to identify parts. But when you think about that from a wider perspective, where are all the different places in the world in the global supply chain where an aircraft part might end up? What information does that part number need to contain? How do we want people to interact with that part number? That really changes your requirements and changes our solution completely. Now we have a much more robust part numbering system, which is much less prone to errors and, I think, delivers a lot more value long term. That, I think, is our secret sauce: Just think about it as a whole, don’t just jump in, and try to build something for the future.
Greg Arnot: Wonderful, thank you for that, Charlie. What do you see as AERALIS’ ultimate goal?
Charlie Jones: I think to revolutionize the aerospace industry is absolutely one of our goals. Increase the opportunities in the UK and that skill base; as Callum said, there are fewer whole aircraft manufacturers in the UK than there were. I think that’s a shame. There are some great skills that are still there that we need to keep up and maintain and provide those opportunities in the UK. As I said earlier, I applied for AERALIS because there aren’t many opportunities like this going on at the moment. Increasing the availability of pilots—it’s a well-documented issue at the moment that we’re having in global air forces, and the need for sovereign capability has never been greater. If you look at the world, having pilots is a key part of that, and AERALIS wants to help solve that problem.
Callum Watson: The availability is of interest. At the taxpayer level, if we can improve the training pipeline in the Air Force and reduce the amount of flying they’re doing to get to a competent level, then we’re saving money for the taxpayer—less wasted flying. Also, increasing sustainability inadvertently; so, less wasted flying, getting to the same solution. We’re looking to improve all those areas to be of interest, to me as a taxpayer and as a young person who’s interested in the sustainability of our planet.
Greg Arnot: Before we wrap up, I’d like to look forward to the future of your industry. How do you foresee aerospace evolving? What do you see now, and how do you see that changing in the future?
Callum Watson: The industry has to evolve, as everything does. If worldwide legislation goes the way I hope it does, I’d like to see more sustainable products out there. With that comes its own challenges. Again, certifications, like I mentioned before, are becoming more expensive. There needs to be a solution to that to enable us to come up with riskier solutions. At the moment, it looks like aerospace is stagnating in terms of typical wide-body commercial jets and other jets. We need to reduce costs and certification, we’re going to realize other solutions, especially when sustainability requires us to look at the problem from a slightly different angle. I see more reliance, hopefully, on modeling and simulation in regulation—the more assurance that we build in that over time, and something we’re looking to help the regulator get on board with, the less we have to cut metal and can try stuff digitally without having to spend enormous amounts of money on test rigs to validate solutions. So, more reliance on that also provides us with more opportunities for new and riskier solutions. So, hopefully, it’s evolving in that kind of way.
Charlie Jones: I think we’ll see, as well as AERALIS, other projects starting digital. I think we’re still yet to see large-scale adoption of complete digital engineering. I think people are really moving towards that mark, which I think will be amazing. Because Callum’s right, you’ll see quicker adoption of newer technology and much greater capability in a single platform. I think when we really adopt engineering from day one, you can get those optimization loops, and you’ll see cooler and wackier solutions to problems that we don’t know exist yet, which I think will be amazing. I think a reduced cost and reduced time to market. Aircraft systems are getting so expensive at the moment. I think there was a US General or someone who said in 2050 the whole US defense budget will be spent on one aircraft. We have to see and move away from that because it’s unsustainable.
Greg Arnot: Will we see more sustainability in your products? How will that be done?
Charlie Jones: I think we will absolutely see more sustainability in our products. Products, in general, will become much more flexible and much more adaptable because they have to be to survive. So, as more sustainable technologies come along, it becomes far easier for existing platforms to adopt those technologies, and so the sustainability will only increase. I think the use of digital tools to design from day one will identify more opportunities for sustainable solutions and allow us to optimize. The aircraft will become more efficient, they’ll become more fuel-efficient, and they’ll last longer, so they will just inherently become more sustainable. I think digital, in general, will drive a lot of increased sustainability. I think the need for more flexible and adaptable platforms will allow sustainable technology to be adopted quickly. There are far more sustainable technologies now than there were 50 years ago. But if an aircraft is 50 years old, it becomes much harder for it to use that new technology if it can’t adapt.
Callum Watson: If we’re looking at how we’re designing our aircraft, with a typical aircraft size designed around a very specific engine, the inherent in the modularity is our design to adapt to new solutions that come onto the market. Designing with sustainability and flexibility in mind allows you to realize solutions like we are, and even the very ethos of our company goals in making the training pipeline more efficient is reducing wasted flight. So, it will be more efficient and sustainable in how air forces manage their fleets.
Greg Arnot: The Industrial Metaverse and Immersive Engineering these days are also hot topics. How do you think AERALIS may benefit from or use immersive tools?
Charlie Jones: I think there are quite a few options for AERALIS to benefit from these tools, not only because we’ve been digital from day one. Because we have digital models of our aircraft and our cockpit, it’s really easy to get into our cockpit using VR. You can sit on a chair, put a VR headset on, and play around with potential cockpit designs. That’s only possible because we’ve been designing digitally from day one. Taking that into requirements management and tolerance management, if we design the next step of tools, we’ll be able to see when a possible configuration of our cockpit doesn’t meet our requirements immediately, which will be fascinating. We’ve seen some really good examples recently of using augmented reality in maintaining and manufacturing the aircraft from day one. So, you can project the CAD onto the aircraft or on the assembly floor. So, the manufacturing engineer knows exactly where the parts have to go, what tolerances they have, like I said, how much torque has to go through that, what order to put them in to reduce errors, increase quality, you can do movement tracking and competence tracking with that, that’s really cool. For maintainability, if you know you have an error code, you no longer have to flick through a big maintenance manual and work out what that means. If you have an AR headset on, it will tell you exactly what error that is, exactly why that part is erring, how to fix it, what tools to use, where those tools live, and interact with it like that. I think it really has a lot of different options, and AERALIS is really well-placed to capitalize on those few examples.
Callum Watson: It’s going from 2D to 3D. It’s just considering the human in all elements of the lifecycle of the aircraft, like Charlie says, from maintainability to the smallest maintainer trying to fit in and fix the system or a pilot in the fuselage. It’s really realizing that connection.
Greg Arnot: Charlie, Callum, it’s been great chatting with you today. I just have one last question before you go: What does the future of design look like to you?
Charlie Jones: It’ll become much more intelligent. The tools will become much more intelligent with humans in the loop. I think we’ll get into a space where we set the constraints and the ideal output and let the tools optimize the design. We set some key points and some red lines and just let it optimize. Then, humans in the loop are there just to approve and move the process along and do the detailed safety analysis. We’re getting to a point at the moment at AERALIS where we’ve codified all of our design organization rules. So, as an engineer and as a designer, you have to follow all of these rules and parts have to have a certain tolerance on them, like pipes routing can’t be within X distance of a heat source or design safety tolerances. I think once you get to a point where you’ve codified all of that and your whole requirement spec, as long as a human approves and assesses the design at the end, I think that’s where we’ll see design move as much more intelligence in that space, the initial ideation and optimization space.
Callum Watson: I agree. It’s about empowering engineers, so the design isn’t looking to remove engineers, but empowering them.
Greg Arnot: And I very much agree. Thank you for being here; it’s been a pleasure talking with you both.
Callum Watson: Thanks, Greg.
Charlie Jones: It’s been amazing. Thank you, Greg.
Greg Arnot: Thanks so much again to Charlie and Callum for joining us today. We hope to speak with you both again soon. Thanks also to our listeners for tuning in to today’s episode. Join us next time for more discussions about the latest in design innovation and software applications. I’m your host, Greg Arnot, and this has been the Next Generation Design Podcast.

Next Generation Design Podcast
As product engineering tools continue to morph and expand at speeds human expertise may not be able to endure, Revolutionary design technologies that span beyond industry borders, will prove their necessity for companies looking to take over their markets in the future. What will the future of design technologies and machinery look like? What will your digitalization story be? Where engineering meets tomorrow.