They decided that a fixed-wing aircraft with excellent maneuvering capabilities at very low altitudes and resistance to stall would be necessary.

The original layout was of a low wing canard configuration, aircraft powered by a pusher turboprop, and built around a 30 mm Gatling gun capable of destroying light armored vehicles.

It retained the general configuration, but now had a single Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D-5 turbofan engine rather than a turboprop as the propeller was vulnerable to debris kicked up by the nosewheel.

A GAU-12/U 25 mm rotary barreled cannon was mounted in the aircraft to the right of the nose in a concave recess under the cockpit.

After Beechcraft sold Scaled Composites back to Rutan, he chose to complete the project with company funds.

After an appearance in the movie Aces: Iron Eagle III as a fictional Me 263 fighter, the aircraft has become a commercially available research test bed.

The aircraft was stored in December 2000 at the Mojave Spaceport until Scaled Composites became a Northrop Grumman subsidiary and flown again on March 7, 2008.

These strakes, combined with a wet wing center-section area, form the bulk of the 2,200 lb (1000 kg, approximately 333 US gallons or 1,260 litres) fuel capacity.

The rudder actuation system also drives the full-time mechanical nosewheel steering for ground operations.

To assure a low cost and high reliability of the components ARES primarily includes off-the-shelf aircraft systems.

[citation needed][dubious – discuss] The pilot sits in a Universal Propulsion Company SIIIS-3ER ejection seat with zero-zero capability.

This bay had no dedicated function on the demonstrator, but was intended to be left available for any additional equipment which the Army might wish to install in the production version.

Due to high fuel volume and good cruising efficiency the aircraft can have a range of 1200 nautical miles (2200 km) at altitude and long endurance.