The United Kingdom and France have signed an agreement to begin studying a next-generation air-to-air missile to succeed Meteor, one of Europe’s most advanced beyond-visual-range weapons.
The Memorandum of Understanding commits both nations to a 12-month joint study examining future air combat threats and the technologies required to maintain air superiority in the decades ahead, according to the UK government.
The work will explore new missile concepts and set out a potential development roadmap, forming part of wider efforts under the Lancaster House 2.0 treaty to deepen defence cooperation between the two countries.
“In a new era of threat we are increasing co-operation with our friends and allies,” said Defence Minister Luke Pollard. “This agreement is a significant step forward… demonstrating the strength of our UK-France defence partnership.”
Meteor, which entered service in 2016, is currently operated by six European nations and is in frontline use with the Royal Air Force’s Typhoon and the French Air Force’s Rafale. Developed through multinational collaboration, it is widely regarded as a benchmark for long-range air-to-air missile performance.
The new study is intended to build on that model, with an emphasis on aligning industrial effort and avoiding duplication across European defence programmes.
“We are strengthening NATO’s capabilities and European security by working with France on the next generation of air-to-air missiles,” Pollard added.
The initiative also forms part of a revived “Entente Industrielle” between the UK and France, aimed at improving efficiency in complex weapons development and strengthening NATO’s edge in high-end air combat.
As part of this effort, a joint Complex Weapons Portfolio Office will be established to coordinate missile programmes and align national priorities, while also opening the door to wider participation from partner nations.
Thought UK was working with Japan on such a capability.
As I recall, the Japanese cancelled JNAAM a couple of years ago. Both countries were looking to use the data from the project to progress their own projects. Whatever the heck that means.
Hopefully this work will stop France claiming Meteor as a French missile. 😀
It’s a real pity the meteor missile we were developing with Japan fell through.
Having an AESA radar with low probability of intercept will make meteor absolutely lethal. Imagine a high speed, high energy weapon with a massive range and no escape zone and you don’t even get a radar warning when it locks on to you.
.. and imagination is all we will have to go on. Any missile from this agreement is 20 years away at best.
Wow. Nice one, George. I actually believed it. Signing an agreement to begin a year-long study at some indefinite time, leading to a potential road map. It sounds just like the kind of thing the MOD would do rather than agreeing to build it.
What form can this actually take apart from a component refresh, though?
Meteor is already one of the longer ranged AAMs and Stratus RS will fulfil the ultra long range anti-HVAA role. So any improvements would be to make it more effective against fighters, not the arms race for an ever larger AAR exclusion zone that the US and China are engaged in.
Those improvements could be managed by giving it an AESA or even dual mode seeker, reducing the detectability of data links through various means, or improving the performance of the motor. Why a new missile? Making it any bigger would size the new missile out of F35B, which is an important consideration.
Unless they are planning to move away from the typical tube missile? A lifting body or flattened shape might produce range and speed improvements, perhaps.
If we consider the advantages of ramjets vs rocket motors. A ramjet in a missile such as Meteor, which is dimensionally similarly to the rocket powered AMRAAM. Will always have a range advantage over the rocket powered AMRAAM. As the fuel it carries doesn’t have to hold oxygen, unlike a rocket propellent. So you will have a greater volume of fuel as you use the oxygen supplied by the air from the readily available atmosphere. However, a rocket motor has better initial impulse and overall acceleration than a ramjet. So there is a performance and requirements trade off. A key requirement today and in the future, especially where 5/6 gen jets face off against each other. Is who can see first, launches first and hopefully gets the kill first. A key parameter here is time to target. You really want the least amount of time from the launch point A to the target B. Which is why people are thinking more along the lines of using rocket motors again.
But a rocket motor, generally only has enough fuel for a 5 to 10 second sustained burn. Where a ramjet, such as Meteor can throttle its fuel usage, to keep some in reserve until it get much closer to the target. Then use that fuel to increase its velocity again, making it harder for the target to evade. Whilst the rocket powered missile by this point is a glider and slowing down considerably. This problem led to dual pulse rocket motors being developed. Which are basically two propellent tanks in sequence, with a timer in the middle. Where the first (rearmost) tank is used to accelerate the missile to its terminal velocity. This tank runs dry and the missile now coasts to the target whilst loosing speed. At a predefined point the second tank will be ignited again to re-accelerate the missile. The second boost helps raise its speed and therefore its chances of achieving a kill over a single pulse rocket motor. This is how the later versions of AMRAAM can reach over 100km in range.
Clearly you can make the missile longer and/or fatter to hold more propellent. But pretty much all western jets are sized for AMRAAM dimensionally. Therefore anything bigger won’t be able to fit in weapons bays (F35) or semi-recessed locations (F18, Typhoon, KF21 etc). They will have to go under the wings, as per the F18 with the AIM-174.
Changing the shape from a classic tube to more of a lifting body, is what they’ve done with Status-RS. Again there is a caveat. A tubular body is easier to stack together in a weapon’s bay. There has to be a minimum distance between each weapon, so when they are dropped or pushed out of the bay, they don’t interfere with each other. Having a body that is wider, may mean you know only have room for two weapons, whereas with a tubular weapon you could fit three.
Dual mode seekers, I would say will be the next big thing. Especially when you have expendable countermeasures like the active RF Britecloud. By giving the missile an imaging infrared (IIR) seeker. Depending how cleaver the missile’s ECU is. It might be able to determine the difference between the target and the decoy, by comparing what the radar and IRR sees.
So what can they do?
Perhaps moving the integrated booster to a proper booster stack so the missile gets up to a high speed initially, then using a shorter ramjet as a sustainer? That would offer the best of both worlds and be consistent with the two stage BVRAAMs a lot of other countries are doing.
It might not help MBDA, but perhaps concentrating on producing enough of the current State of the Art BVRAAM would be a good start.
Can Europe afford to design an even better missile and build enough of the one it already has? Or has it actually got enough?
Maybe I am mis-reading this, perhaps it is only ‘studying’ the ‘Art of the Possible’ for a future development.