AAC Wamira

Wamira
Role	Trainer aircraft
Manufacturer	Australian Aircraft Consortium
First flight	-
Status	Cancelled 1986
Primary user	Royal Australian Air Force
Number built	0
Program cost	$65M before project was cancelled

The AAC Wamira was a turboprop military trainer aircraft, designed for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) by the Australian Aircraft Consortium (AAC). The project was cancelled shortly after the first prototype was completed.

The story of the aircraft and its creators are interwoven, as AAC was set up expressly to design and build the aircraft. The consortium came into being in 1981, with its members being the three main aircraft manufacturers in Australia at that time—the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC), the Government Aircraft Factories (GAF), and Hawker de Havilland (HdH). The RAAF, which expressed an intention to buy 69 aircraft, specified a turboprop trainer of broadly conventional tricycle undercarriage low-wing layout, to be powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-25C engine. Unusually however, its two seats were to be in a side-by-side configuration. The RAAF also specified that the type be fully aerobatic, be capable of cross-country navigation and weapons training, have a 200 kt cruising speed at sea level, and a minimum service life of 20 years and 8,000 flying hours. AAC signed a design and development contract in June 1982 and began work to produce an aircraft to meet the design criteria under the designation A10.

When it became clear that the aircraft as specified by the RAAF had limited appeal to other potential users, a version with the more usual tandem seating was designed, this being designated the A20; both models were named Wamira. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed with Westland Aircraft to establish a joint venture to market (and hopefully sell) the A20 in Europe. The A20 was subsequently entered in the competition to replace the Royal Air Force (RAF) fleet of BAC Jet Provosts, a competition eventually won by the Short Tucano. An engineering mockup (EMU) was produced in Australia consisting of a fuselage from the fin fillet forward with stub wings. Made from wood & alloy it utilised real aircraft components such as ejection seats, control columns, rudder pedals etc. and was shipped to the UK appearing on the Westland stand at Farnborough '84. However the Wamira was never a serious contender due to it being at the design stage whilst the other three contenders were flying aircraft.

...
Wikipedia