Significant progress has been made in the UK’s Spearcap 3 programme, despite ongoing challenges stemming from international collaboration and interdependencies.
In response to Johanna Baxter (Labour), Maria Eagle, Minister of State for Defence, detailed the status of the project, emphasising recent successes and the steps being taken to address current obstacles.
“The programme achieved a significant milestone with the successful first SPEAR guided firing conducted at the end of 2024,” Eagle confirmed, highlighting the critical progress made despite complications identified in the Infrastructure and Project Authority’s 2023-24 report.
The project has faced additional challenges beyond those initially reported, particularly involving coordination with international partners. Eagle acknowledged that these challenges have required “significant adjustments to maintain progress” but assured that corrective measures are underway.
“The SRO, in collaboration with Defence Equipment and Support and Industry, is prioritising the development of a revised and viable baseline, which is planned to be finalised in Quarter two of financial year 2025-26,” she stated, underscoring the Ministry of Defence’s commitment to ensuring the programme stays on track.
Last year, the latest firing trial marked the first time the missile engaged a target, demonstrating its ability to navigate autonomously and strike with precision using advanced radar-seeker technology. The missile is capable of targeting threats over 100 km away, including air defences, ships, armoured vehicles, and fast-moving platforms.
Planned for eventual integration with the UK’s fleet of F-35B fighter jets, SPEAR will enable flexible strike capabilities from land or sea, including operations from the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. However, the clearance process to use SPEAR on the F-35 is not expected to be completed before 2028, a delay that could limit its deployment in the near term. Furthermore, while the missile’s compact design allows for versatility, its warhead size of less than 50kg and range of around 100 miles are modest compared to other modern weapons systems.
Matthew Brown, SPEAR Team Leader at DE&S, highlighted the significance of the trial, stating: “This trial was a key step on the way to delivering SPEAR to the UK frontline, where it will provide a new capability to defeat the most complex air defence systems, enabling pilots to fly and fight wherever they’re needed in defence of the UK and its allies.”
The missile programme supports hundreds of jobs within MBDA’s UK operations, with design and development centred in Stevenage and Bristol, and manufacturing in Bolton.
Defence Minister Luke Pollard described the achievement as: “a significant leap forward in UK Armed Forces’ capabilities, ensuring our Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel are equipped with cutting-edge technology to protect our nation.” He also noted: “This achievement not only strengthens national defence capabilities but also boosts the UK economy, by supporting high-skilled jobs and innovation.”
The SPEAR programme is part of a £6.5 billion MOD investment in UK weapons development over the next decade, which includes projects such as Brimstone, Sea Viper, and Storm Shadow.
Chris Moon, BAE Systems’ UK Delivery Director for Typhoon Capability, commended the collaboration behind the trial: “This successful firing from Typhoon is as a result of the hard work and outstanding collaboration between MBDA, MoD and BAE Systems personnel over many months.”
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What international partners? SPEAR 3 is meant to be part of an effort to maintain sovereign capability in complex weapon design and integration and is MBDA UK designed and built. The only acknowledged international partner is P&W for the TJ-150 engine. Wasn’t this sovereign capability part of the while rationale behind the DIS, SPEAR and “Team Complex Weapons”?
Previous problems were apparently down to personnel and recruitment, now it’s international partners? Something fishy here.
F35B needs the ‘international partner’ LM to play ball.
There could also be issues with the Swiss making the warhead….
The great thing about this family of sovereign weapons is that you can use the guidance and aero packages on a very wide range of other weapons.
AFAIK the warhead is from TDW in Germany.
Thanks for the info
Engineers solve difficult problems as a matter of their professional life. It’s why they become engineers.
Integration on other platforms….range time….
What has puzzled me for a while is that Spear uses a US made turbojet…we have a unspoken policy in recent years of no US components in air weapons….so quite why we’re using a P & W unit is anyones guess…I suspect its used as nothing else fits the bill. But hopefully the RR/Safran collaboration on small turbines means we can replace it in later production….
By international partners they mean Lockheed Martin who are responsible for the integration of all weapons on F35 except for Israel who do their own. It is something fishy, it’s the gross incompetence of Lockheed Martin to role out TR3 and Block IV software and prioritisation of integration of US weapons to help reinforce US monopolies and also keep the DoD off Lockheeds back for the glacially slow pace of integration of US weapons.
While the F35 is a formidable aircraft its lack of modern weapons are beginning to be a clear disadvantage of operating the platform, weapons like LRSM, AIM 260, Meteor, SPEAR and distant prospects who even widely fielded weapons like storm breaker and JSM are still not available.
Indeed even Americans are getting pissed with the blatant lack of available weaponry. But talking of pissed off gets in my craw how Trump parrots on about the rest of the World cheating the US out of its natural economic rights (rather than its own incompetence and competitiveness) when so much esp in defence is stacked in their favour and deliberately exploited to support exports.
Your mistake is expecting the deranged orangutan to have a logical or coherent thought. The guy just says stuff to appeal to his supporters and feels no need to be accurate or factual.
The US has created a very stacked system for ripping of the IP of the rest of the world and then reexporting it….all funded by FMS.
Once again, evidence of the US ripping off IP would be nice but of course, that doesn’t fit with your anti-US agenda.
And FMS provides weapons to US allies at the same price as the US forces pay. Do you really think that happens with UK exports?? Ask the Saudi’s how much they pay vs the RAF.
“ And FMS provides weapons to US allies at the same price as the US forces pay. Do you really think that happens with UK exports?? Ask the Saudi’s how much they pay vs the RAF.”
Oh, let’s forget the FMS tax shall we?
And shall we forget when T Blair went to Washington to propose a UK FMS tax and was told ‘no, we won’t buy your weapons if you do that.’
Or shall we also forget that all main systems have to be manufactured stateside and are then ITAR’d.
If you knew anything about me you would know I’m very pro USA but I’m a very straight-down-the-line negotiator who spots and calls out bull***t.
There is a reason UK has de-ITAR’d all its systems – which I support as a part of our Tangerine Proofing.
Dear Grinch. Even when US military wants to buy UK kit they are denied approval until a US ‘equivalent’ is available….Shellfire upgrades to match brimstone comes to mind.
Yeah, one on my has to look at Boeing to see what the US has a trade deficit with the rest of the world, it’s propped up by natural resources which it is very good at getting out of the ground but so is Saudi Arabia.
Xenophobic claptrap.
How that Xenophobic? Do you believe Boeing demonstrates America manufacturing prowess or that the US is not good at extracting resources from its territory?
Slightly wrong analysis if I may?
The thing with F35 integration is that will mean remaking the software/firmware in the missile.
The issue is that you perfectly well can just go ahead and integrate it on other platforms such as Typhoon or UAVs but you then have forked software/firmware so you have two sets to maintain which costs.
So there is a degree of circularity about this. That mods will be to be ported back to core, if sensible, or sit in an API(ish) layer if needed to fix F35 ‘features’.
You want to keep the ‘layer’ as simple as possible. Although with complex weapons nothing is that simple IRL.
Hope that makes sense.
It doesn’t.
There is a standard NATO interface for weapons to talk to aircraft, no changes are required in the missile just air drop tests to make sure it properly clears when released. The issue is the aircraft needs to know the firing authorisation parameters of the missile (range at particular altitudes and speeds) so it can tell the pilot that the weapon is within parameter to fire and that requires creating a profile for it in the aircrafts software weapon management module.
And F-35B was supposed to bring in a Universal Weapons Interface to make integration easy…
Only problem…its delayed and is part of Block IV…
“ And F-35B was supposed to bring in a Universal Weapons Interface to make integration easy…
Only problem…its delayed and is part of Block IV…”
Exactly my point – there is no such thing ATM as a universal interface that means Lou don’t have to have software layers and specific software modules for each platform.
Morning SB, will there be any Spear integration onto the P8s or would it be too light and short ranged? Could be useful for small to medium engagements or even the JSM or will there be an air launched FC/ASW?
I don’t honesty know.
It is a trade off for a small fleet with a small weapons bay.
No plans yet, but it would make sense. Very useful against smaller vessels….
JSM is not integrated on P-8 yet. Australia was looking at it a few years ago, but it has gone awfully quiet in the last few years…yo’d think it would make sense, particularly for Norway and Australia who both have industrial involvement in JSM.
US is meanwhile planning to integrate LRASM which Australia has also purchased, which may have changed their mind….
Evidence of the US giving priority for US weapons over UK’s would be nice but of course, that doesn’t fit with your anti-US agenda.
The truth is everyone, including the US, is in the same boat….
Right now the following stores are integrated and operational on F-35
Gun Pod – On F-35B and C
Internal Gun – F-35A, however there are still issues with this…
Air to Air – AIM-9X and AIM-120 AMRAAM….and from the UK AIM-132 ASRAAM
Air to Ground – JSOW (USN only at present), SDB1, JDAM in 1,000lb and 2,000lb, GBU-12….and from the UK Paveway IV
Nuclear – B-61/12 gravity bomb
Other – Luggage pod – Internal only on F-35A at present (although it should be easy for B and C as well).
Thats it….no other nation outside of the UK and US has weapons integrated….and its noticeable that to date there are no powered air to ground munitions at all, and no powered weapons available of any type from the inner and mid wing pylons…..no external or internal tanks, no EW or recon pods….
On the way are…JSM (Joint US/Norway), and from the US JASSM, LRASM, Hellfire (allegedly, but not JAGM), AARGM-ER, SiAW, SDBII and AIM-260 (but it will be after F/A-18E and F-15EX, so a few years yet)…and from the UK Spear, Paveway Penetrator and Meteor.
Given the amount the UK has purchased (out of total production of over 1,000 we’ve had 3.5% of the total delivered) we’re not doing that bad in terms of integration at all….and there are no other non-UK/US weapons planned (the Turkish SOM-J long since disappeared off the list).
It’s not a great story by any stretch….the only light on the horizon is that with Block IV should come the Universal Weapons Interface which should speed up integration….
External tanks, baggage pods…and finally someone taking advantage of the Terma external gun pod for other uses like Recon would make a lot of sense…
For the UK the big questions is….even with Spear and Paveway IV is that really enough types of munitions qualified?
We really need to qualify a range of Spear variants (which should be easy following the main integration effort)…we should have SpearGlide, Spear-EW, MRUSW and a potential airlaunched LPS (call it Spear-ER) lined up if we’re not daft….and we do need a heavier, cheaper, munition than PWIV…the easy thing to do there is just bite the bullet and buy 1,000 JDAM/JDAM-ER 1,000lbers from the US…they’re peanuts compared to anything else out there…and they’re integrated on Typhoon as well…(thanks to ze Germans). Buy 50 JSM and we’re good to go…
Israel has its own stand off bombs on F-35i.
Good post. Appreciate the positive take on it all, thanks.
Just to note @John Hartley….
There is zero evidence of the integration of any Israeli weapons to F-35. The Israeli’s have a single trials aircraft, and it is totally dedicated to integration of some Israeli electronics. The scope of these is not major and mainly relates to battle management and comms links for existing Israeli systems.
In fact Israel specifically ordered batches of US weapons that were integrated to F-35 for this purpose. This included additional Amraam, AIM-9X, SDB1, GBU-12 and JDAM.
The truth is everyone, including the US, is in the same boat….
Right now the following stores are integrated and operational on F-35
Gun Pod – On F-35B and C
Internal Gun – F-35A, however there are still issues with this…
Air to Air – AIM-9X and AIM-120 AMRAAM….and from the UK AIM-132 ASRAAM
Air to Ground – JSOW (USN only at present), SDB1, JDAM in 1,000lb and 2,000lb, GBU-12….and from the UK Paveway IV
Nuclear – B-61/12 gravity bomb
Other – Luggage pod – Internal only on F-35A at present (although it should be easy for B and C as well).
Thats it….no other nation outside of the UK and US has weapons integrated….and its noticeable that to date there are no powered air to ground munitions at all, and no powered weapons available of any type from the inner and mid wing pylons…..no external or internal tanks, no EW or recon pods….
On the way are…JSM (Joint US/Norway), and from the US JASSM, LRASM, Hellfire (allegedly, but not JAGM), AARGM-ER, SiAW, SDBII and AIM-260 (but it will be after F/A-18E and F-15EX, so a few years yet)…and from the UK Spear, Paveway Penetrator and Meteor.
Given the amount the UK has purchased (out of total production of over 1,000 we’ve had 3.5% of the total delivered) we’re not doing that bad in terms of integration at all….and there are no other non-UK/US weapons planned (the Turkish SOM-J long since disappeared off the list).
It’s not a great story by any stretch….the only light on the horizon is that with Block IV should come with improvements which should speed up integration….
External tanks, baggage pods…and finally someone taking advantage of the Terma external gun pod for other uses like Recon would make a lot of sense…
For the UK the big questions is….even with Spear and Paveway IV is that really enough types of munitions qualified?
We really need to qualify a range of Spear variants (which should be easy following the main integration effort)…we should have SpearGlide, Spear-EW, MRUSW and a potential airlaunched LPS (call it Spear-ER) lined up if we’re not daft….and we do need a heavier, cheaper, munition than PWIV…the easy thing to do there is just bite the bullet and buy 1,000 JDAM/JDAM-ER 1,000lbers from the US…they’re peanuts compared to anything else out there…and they’re integrated on Typhoon as well…(thanks to ze Germans). Buy 50 JSM and we’re good to go…
A fair summary.
Maybe if we had maintained our T1 partnership we could also integrate weapons ourselves.
LM and F-35 integration
Missiles in the UK haven’t been entirely ‘sovereign’ for decades, even back in the 80s warheads, motors, various guidance bits and bobs came from all over the shop. Engineering is an international business at this level and of course MBDA is a pan-european company headquartered in Paris…
I agree there was a point where everything g had to be domestically produced and by the mid 80s that was no more.
The main thrust was to de-ITAR weapons so we could export them freely. Also to remove German and now Swiss parts as much as possible as they are also tricky over export licences.
The worm has turned on a lot of this and the ITAR issues were one bucket of cold water and the Swiss issues another bucket and the final bucket of icy cold water was Germany over Typhoon.
You cannot operate with these kinds of constraints.
True, but I am not sure UK ever encountered an issue selling MBDA equipement… Did it?
UK has a branch of MBDA. The UK branch. Missiles developped in UK can be sold to whoever UK wants to sell them.
For common programs, things may differ. Not sure though that UK suffered so much of it.
The refusal – that is what it is – of the Americans to integrate our missiles with the F35.
They aren’t “refusing”.
The Americans are as p*ssed off with LM delays as we are, as they are waiting for more of the their weapons to be integrated too.
Cut the xenophobic conspiracy theories.
i would suggest you research what “xenophobic” actually means
I read here on U.K.D.J. the work to integrate U.K. weapons on the F35 would take six years, the same figure as given six years ago. I think it not so much xenophobic (?) as a hard lesson in life. It is their ball and not ours.
Well MBDA UK or otherwise suggests that there are international partners, isn’t MBDA pan European and MBDA UK just a subsidiary?
So we get a weapon that is limited in it’s use later than expected. What a shock.
I presume the F-35Bs limited internal capacity is in part responsible for that, so slightly ironic I guess that it will be the last to get it no doubt. Equally if 100 miles is quite low for a weapon like this then perhaps it is a serious argument as some ‘experts’ have stated about the effectiveness of manned aircraft anywhere near the front especially as this is designed for precision.
Depends if you want a big stockpile of relatively cheap swarmable missiles that can be drone launched?
If UKR has proved anything it is that piles of good medium tech weapons you can rapidly replace are essential with less Gucci specials to support them.
But the Gucci specials are essential for specific tasks like brining down bridges etc.
What Gucci weapons have been successful in bringing down bridges in Ukraine?
If anything, the evidence has demonstrated that massed use of low tech platforms carrying large payloads (i.e drone planes and USVs) have been *far* more effective at taking out strategic targets of significance, compared to expensive and limited platforms like Storm Shadow and HIMARs, which have achieved very little.
The videos I’ve seen of himars cluster munitions wiping out platoons of Russians at a time would suggest they are useful. Likewise of the strikes on expensive mobile radar and communications systems, far behind the lines. As for storm shadow, I’d consider a submarine and several divisional headquarters, plus myriad valuable air defence systems, amongst other targets, suggest their use has been critical too. There’s a reason cheaper drones are now landing on Russian refineries every other day.
I would not oppose them. A schweer punkts to break the radar, a swarm to exploit the breach… I like nothing moré than an air war working as planned.
The tactical strikes in Ukraine, combining Ground to ground missiles, drones and Storm Shadow are a source of inspiration.
Stormshadow has been highly effective. It hasn’t been low tech weapons penetrating the defences of Sevastapol. Similarly it hasn’t been low technically weapons precisely hitting bridges – that was Himars…
could fit external weapons and loose stealth, if carrier based have to drop unspent weaponry in the sea before deck landing. can see f35 going in first with typhoon following behind with bigger load
On the Kardashev scale we are all zeroes.
♾️🫶✌️
Relevance to this article: zero.
Except you. You’re around minus-40!
Not sure that the Kardashev applies individually. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s a measure of a civilisation. Therefore, we can’t individually be zeroes.
Not only that, but your comment completely ignores the actual purpose and way of measuring used by the Kardashev scale in order to make a political point. The scale is a measure of how much energy a society can manipulate at any one time, not of global peace, as you implied.
Earth is generally seen to rank at about 0.7 on the scale, with a Type 1 civilisation being able to manipulate the energy of their home planet.
I admit I don’t understand this. If the issue is that it won’t work on the F-35B, how does “prioritising the development of a revised and viable baseline” help anyone? Either prioritise integration on the Typhoon or prioritise screaming and shouting at JPO and Lockheed Martin. You can revise your baseline at leisure — it’s not going to do anything and doesn’t need prioritising.
Would SPEAR 3 be a good surface launched anti-ship missile? Obviously it’s lighter than NSM but roughly guessing you could get four for every heavyweight AShM. While it might not be as effective as a big old f off warhead of 200-300kg if it can target and knock out fire control and search radars, gun turrets etc, or even pop up dive attacks on VLS blocks to try cause detonations, that would be just as effective surely. Plus it can be used to utterly demolish fast attack craft swarms if you have 32 of them.
It’s a glide weapon, its range will be far worse launching from a ship
Maritime Brimstone has been tested and would be effective against swarm attacks. But its range is only @12 km.
In the end at that range medium cal guns with smart rounds are probably more cost and weight effective.
Ryan, that would duplicate Capability and Expense when you have Martlet and Sea Venom to cover the Light /Medium AShM role.
Also CAMM has a very significant ASuW role out to the radar horizon.
CAMM can do the same out to the radar horizon and it’s a Mach 3 missile.
It all depends on how big a booster you put underneath the SPEAR.
If you get to the stage where it mimics an air launch, perhaps by adding enough booster to get up to CAMM length, then you retain the 100km+ range and it massively outstrips all of our other weapons in that size category.
If the booster barely lifts it above the ship, then you’re probably limited to CAMM ranges and the whole exercise is pointless.
But CAMM is already integrated to RN CMS so there is limited point in repeating that expensive process?
The only reason to do that is for cheaper far more numerous war shots.
As @Jonathan says at mid range a 40mm shell is a much more plentiful and cheaper war shot which you can fit a lot of into a magazine and can easily be RAS’d.
I honestly don’t know why they do not move on spear three for the typhoon..all the integration work has been down and at present one of the very biggest holes we have in capability is a decent air launched anti ship missile option and spear three would make typhoon a very powerful navel strike platform.
SPEAR is designed for a stealthy aircraft to get close enough to a radar or ship to launch without being detected (40 miles to 70 mile). Typhoon would be long dead at this range. That’s why typhoon has Stom Shadow.
Not really a 100km radar horizon for a ground based radar is out to a hight of 2000 feet.. basically the tornado stays below 2000 feet it’s safe from the radar it then pops up and lobs the missile at its target and sods off before the radar realises it’s there. It’s how an aircraft can sneak up on a fleet with an integrated air defence system if there is no AEW and fire a Missile with a range of only 22 miles.
As I alluded to above it is probably to keep the software stack simple(r).
If it is integrated to Typhoon the main software stack would have to be frozen and anything else handled via specific modules or API workarounds.
As you say the main work is done so there has to be a reason ‘why’…..
Dear Grinch. Even when US military wants to buy UK kit they are denied approval until a US ‘equivalent’ is available….hellfire upgrades to match brimstone comes to mind.
“Sub 50kg warhead”….. I have vague memories of spear originally being conceived as 100kg total with +/- 30 kg warhead. Have read commentary recently suggesting warhead may be as small as 6kg…similar to Brimstone. While thst would indeed be sub 50kg surrely SP3, to have a broad strategic impact, would require a reasonable double digit warhead.
Strategic impact?
It’s a tactical weapon, Spear is designed to take out vehicles, SAM equipment and command posts. That’s why it’s so small, because there a lot of that sort of soft, high-value target on a modern battlefield and you need to carry lots of them.
At a push it could probably fly through the fire slit of a bunker or buried command post, no need for a huge warhead with internal detonation.
If you want a big warhead, you end up with a Sea Venom type weapon, with a c.30kg warhead on a 100kg missile but limited to 30km range, useless for a jet fighter against defended targets.