M346 Advanced Jet Trainer Gets Nod from Aeromacchi

Eurotrainer proposals through a European Industry Working Group (EIWG) and 1999 Outline European Staff Target (OEST) have provided a strong stimulus for Aermacchi to go ahead with its Yak-130-based M346 advanced jet trainer project. This followed over 300 test flights undertaken in the past four years of the agile Yak/AEM-130 with Yakovlev and Sokol, allowing Aermacchi to accumulate a large aerodynamic and handling database.

Aermacchi's original 50:50 Yak/AEM-130 partnership with Yakovlev dated back to the design stage from 1993, and incorporated Russian and western requirements for structure, flight-control and maintenance. Yak/AEM-130 features also included an analog fly-by-wire control system, allowing carefree handling through angles of attack up to 40 degrees.

Announcing its full commitment at last year's Farnborough Air Show to a westernized Yak/AEM-130, which fully meets EIWG requirements, Aermacchi described the resulting M346 as its most important program, particularly in the framework of its future European alliances. Development of a Russian Yak-130 version by Yakovlev and Sokol may continue independently, however.

Extensive redesign by Aermacchi of the original joint concept baseline to production standards, with lower weights, better reliability, and improved supportability involved scaling it down by 10-15%. Empty weight is now 10,195-pounds, and max clean TOW, 14,770-pounds, plus provision for 6,615-pounds of external stores. Reducing the canopy depth and cross-sectional area for slimmer profiles was made possible by the smaller Martin-Baker/SICAMB Mk 16 ejection-seats. The M346 now meets all western design, quality assurance and certification standards, the latter under Italian air force supervision.

A full-scale mock-up of the M346, shown for the first time at Le Bourget, reveals several other airframe changes from the Yak/AEM-130. These include replacement of the original inward-retracting main landing gear by AMX-type forward-folding legs, Liebherr nosewheel, and installation of an air refueling probe forward of the cockpit. Slight changes in the inner wing-fences help in controlling vortex lift from the fuselage/wing strakes, for improved high-alpha stability. This has allowed replacement of the originally chined forward-fuselage by a circular-section nose.

Main M346 change, of course, is the use of twin 6,300-pounds-thrust Honeywell/ITEC F124-GA-200 high-performance turbofans, with less complex intakes, in place of the prototype's 4,850-pounds-thrust ZMK/Klimov DV-2S powerplants, for high subsonic performance, up to Mach 0.95.

Other western equipment being provided by program risk-sharing partners/suppliers include a Teleavio/Marconi Italiana/BAE Systems Santa Monica full-authority digital quadruplex FBW system, with Dowty and Hamilton Sundstrand Microtecnica primary actuation. Microtecnica is supplying the hydraulic systems for secondary flight-control, leading- and trailing-edge flap actuation, as well as the Iron Bird test rig. Alenia Difesa DSAE will supply the main mission processor, LCD multi-function displays and HUDs, and Honeywell the 764 embedded GPS/laser INS.

Flight development with three prototype M346s is planned from Venegono from mid-2003, with the second following in 2004. Production deliveries would be available from 2006, in ample time to meet the pre-2010 Eurotrainer requirement. Forecast M346 sales over the next 30 years are over 600, worth $2 billion or more.