Maiden flight of Scaled Composites Model 437 Vanguard
August 30, 2024
The newest Scaled Composites Experimental Aircraft, the Model 437 Vanguard, made its maiden flight in the hands of test pilot Brian Maisler, at the Mojave Air and Space Port, California, on 29 August 2024. Maisler said afterwards that: “Today’s first flight was in a good jet with a great team: this is the best part of my job. Thanks to everyone and their two years of hard work culminating in making this an uneventful and fun day!”
Scaled Composites was founded by Burt Rutan in 1982, and is a specialised aerospace and composites development company that has continually worked to prove ideas, push boundaries, and influence the future. Scaled Composites has averaged one first flight of a unique, new aircraft per year, many of them groundbreaking, milestone achieving, proof-of-concept aeroplanes. The company’s extensive portfolio includes the Proteus, SpaceShipOne, Stratolaunch, and the Model 401.
The Model 401 Sierra was developed as a low-cost manufacturing technology demonstrator aircraft, and two identical vehicles were built. Development took 24 months from the initial concept to the first flight in October 2017.
The two Model 401s were known as “Sons of Ares”, the ARES (Agile Responsive Effective Support) having been a previous close support demonstrator. Ares was also the Greek god of war, whose sons were Phobos and Deimos. Those names were allocated to the two Model 401 prototypes – N401XP ‘Phobos’ and N401XD ‘Deimos’. These have been used for a range of payload development testing duties by a number of customers, taking advantage of their 2,000 pounds of payload weight capacity and 80 cubic feet of internal payload volume.
The Model 437 was based on the Model 401, and was intended as a conceptual design for a multi-mission, low-cost, attritable, uncrewed aircraft. Until the Model 437 prototype was seen for the first time being towed at Mojave, the Model 437 was known only as an unmanned aircraft, and it came as a surprise when the prototype was seen to have a cockpit. Scaled Composites describe the Model 437 Vanguard prototype as a crewed variant of the original concept. It is probably intended for flight testing in support of an unmanned production version.
Scaled Composites leveraged its extensive experience in rapid design, fabrication, and testing of experimental aircraft to develop the Model 437 Vanguard. This included a clean sheet aircraft design, aerodynamic and structural analysis, fuselage and empennage fabrication, aircraft assembly, systems integration, and ground and flight test execution.
Scaled Composites is today a wholly owned subsidiary of the Northrop Grumman Corporation. Northrop Grumman used its Digital Pathfinder fully connected digital ecosystem’s tools and processes to define, develop, build and verify the aircraft’s removable wing assemblies.
The Model 437 Vanguard has a gross take off weight of 10,000 pounds, and is powered by a single Pratt & Whitney 535 engine producing approximately 3,400 pounds of thrust. After completing envelope expansion, the M437 Vanguard is expected to have a range of approximately 3,000 nautical miles and an endurance of 6 hours. The aircraft can carry up to 2,000 pounds of payload underwing and in an internal weapons bay sized to accommodate two AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. Aviation Week estimated a fuel load of 4,000 pounds of fuel and a cruise speed of around Mach 0.8.
