Jeff,

I am Jim Kreutz who along with Milo Burroughs started the LCBAA project for The High Technology Test Bed at Fort Lewis.  It is a long-long story but essentialy we were initialy supported by Gen. Bob Elton(Fort Lewis Commander) and Gen. Shy Meyers(Army Chief of Staff) and actualy two High Level Air Force Staff people(John Boyd & Chuck Spinney).  That kept us going for about 4 years working with Burt Rutan on the design and using our two Long-Ez's as concept demonstrators.  Eventually the two Generals retired or went to other jobs.  The fact that we were not considered Politically Correct by the Air Force Close Air-Support folks and the Army Apache developers thought we might pose a threat to their project was reason enough for me being forced to retire and Milo prohibited from doing any further work on the program.  One Long-Ez was destroyed and to the best of my knowledge the other is still flying for some Government Agency.  That was when Burt spent his own money to build AERES because he had been promised by an Air Force Gen. that if he built it they would test and evaluate it--that Gen. had also lied!!  Well Jeff that is the short version!!

Jim

Hope you stick around for a while, Jim.

We especially appreciate guys who've actually had their hands involved in projects.

 

As for other systems,

yaers ago (1980s) BAe had their SABA, Small Agile Battlefield Aircraft,

that went thru numerous design concepts.

While its internal gun, either a 25mm ADEN or BK27, was no comparison to ARES' GAU-12 25mm,

the overall SABA program did yield some interesting aicraft planforms, anything from ARES-esque canard fighters, to twin boom pusher prop powered or small jet engines.

 

A great magazine from days long gone (1980s) was International Combat Arms (Petersen Publishing), and in the 1987-1988 timeframe (it was out of publication circa 1990) they had a very decent article on mudfighters,

everything from new proposals for A-37s,

 to interest in arming its replacement, the T-46 (cancelled also),

to the SABA,

and perhaps even yours, I cannot remember.

 

 link (  ht*p://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread186160/pg1 )

(there's some very interesting Russian concept artwork further down the page...)