Advanced High Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft

The Advanced High Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (Ahrlac), is a light reconnaissance and counter-insurgency aircraft developed in South Africa by AHRLAC Holdings, a joint venture between the Paramount Group and Aerosud. Designed as an inexpensive, more versatile substitute for unmanned aerial vehicles, it is expected to make its first flight in 2012.

Design and development
Claimed by its designers to be the first fully indigenous fixed-wing military aircraft developed in Africa, and the first indigenous South African military aircraft of any sort since the Denel Rooivalk, the Ahrlac features a twin-boom, high-wing, single-pusher-engine configuration, using a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A turboprop engine, with a crew of two seated in tandem in Martin-Baker ejection seats. The Ahrlac's airframe uses a mixture of metal and composite construction, and is designed to provide maximum visibility for its crew. The aircraft is designed to carry an internal 20 mm cannon, with 4 or 6 hardpoints for carrying weapons mounted under the wings, including rocket pods, unguided bombs, and both air-to-surface and air-to-air missiles. The lower fuselage consists of a variety of interchangeable conformal modular units fitted with a variety of sensor systems such as infrared and optical cameras, synthetic aperture radar, electronic intelligence gathering and electronic warfare equipment.

The Ahrlac is intended to compete with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the marketplace; Paramount claims that the aircraft will be cheaper to acquire and operate than UAVs on account of it not requiring the expensive subsystems required for remote control of unmanned aircraft. It is optimised for the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISTAR) and counter-insurgency missions; coastal patrol, anti-smuggling and disaster relief capabilities are also projected for the type. Its designers state that the aircraft is designed with the needs of First World customers in mind.

a full-scale mockup has been constructed and a quarter-scale model has been used for test flights. First flight of the Ahrlac is planned for 2012, with entry into service being possible in mid-2013. The price of the aircraft is projected at being under US$10 million per aircraft, with the potential market for Ahrlac being described as "in the hundreds of thousands".