The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has clarified its position on funding for the Long-Range Area Effects (LRAE) project, in response to a written parliamentary question from James Cartlidge, Conservative MP for South Suffolk.
Cartlidge asked whether funding would be allocated for the LRAE programme in the financial years 2024-25 and 2025-26.
Maria Eagle, Minister of State for Defence, responded, stating, “The Long-Range Area Effects (LRAE) project is currently pre-concept. Defence is considering its wider Deep Fires options subject to outcomes of the Strategic Defence Review.”
The LRAE Demonstrator, part of the Army’s exploration of Extended-Range Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS-ER), is investigating potential payloads for the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System.
According to AviationWeek, these include Thales’ proposed Light Multirole Missile for armoured target engagement and small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for intelligence and reconnaissance missions.
Initial test firings were anticipated around 2025.
So the answer is no …
Martlet in long range fires? A typo, surely.
Unless it were mounted on a GLSDB booster, I suppose…
Maybe there’s room for a sort of Martlet XL with a longer range and a bigger bang.
Given that a GMLRS rocket is about 4 times the length of a LMM (GMLRS is 3.8m LMM is 1.3) I’d imagine that any ground fires version of Martlet would use a booster of some description.
It’s a variant called Fury with rocket motor removed and wings added to create a glide bomb. The guidance system will be inertial with terminal homing. Not sure how many of these would fit in a single launch missile.
LMM had another unpowered variant called FFLMM (Free Flight LLM).It was marketed to the US market by Textron as the Fury munition. Essentially it uses some components from LMM….but not actually a lot. Fury/FFLMM was laser guided, but used SAL rather than the beam riding methoud utilised by LMM. Also had no rocket motor and different wings…pus different body…so re-use of components will have been limited to some internal units. The FFLMM variant to be used in the LRAE trials is even more removed from LMM…it will have folding wings and will use a ‘lo-cost’ seeker, presumably an IIR seeker… Read more »
Again like every thing to do with Defence its under re view, ie not much going on. We will be fine if any enemy is happy to wait until about 2030 to attack then some of this under review stuff might be in use by then. And all stuff we like ie RCH 155 might of even been ordered by then.
Realistically we should have a wide range of payloads we can employ from the M270 including PrSM. Warfare has moved on and the M270 will be doing everything from SEAD/DEAD to area suppression and anti armour missions.
Using Thales LMM in a long range fire system could be a massive game changer. Hopefully this is the kind of thing we get out of the defence review.
Current Plans for M270A2 GMLRS-ER PrSM LPS (the new elongated boosted Spear missile, should be good for c250-300km) LRAE in ‘kinetic attack’ – with Folding Wing FFLMM and ‘Recon’ with Outrider UAS payloads Thats what we should get….but there are some gaps we need to address. My thoughts… – We need our own ‘sovereign’ general attack rocket like GMLRS-ER. Our own production should be prioritised (see France with Thundart). We did jointly fund GMLRS development with the US… – Return of Cluster Munitions – Not a popular choice, but they’ve proved their utility in Ukraine, and peer threats have not… Read more »
I agree, especially on mines and cluster munitions, worlds changed, no point in us being in unilateral disarmament treaties.
I’m hoping the boosted Spear-3 could be looked at as a ship fired weapon, for our T26, T31 etc. Where due its size it can be four packed in a Mk41 VLS. Thereby if the ship also has FCASW, it will provide a high-low effects mix. Where Spear can be used on smaller targets, but also on high speed surface vessels. Where perhaps there isn’t time to role up a Wildcat and get it launched. Additionally for a naval engagement. Where a swarm of Spear could be used in conjunction with FCASW to attack a peer vessel to overwhelm a… Read more »
The real pity is that we’re not doing 2 missiles for LPS. One the rocket boosted elongated Spear and the original CAMM/Brimstone mash-up (although it looked similar to CAMM it was a 178mm diameter missile, not 166mm like CAMM, so different body).
All of the components and technology are there already. Doing both would mean a whole lot of advantages…
More Eagle speke. What a waste of time these politicians are.
Do you think Minsters or State should refuse to answer questions in parliament or do you just believe we should not have a Parliament that ask’s the government questions?
The system is broken. Politicians are dishonest at least, and corrupt. Only a total reset will correct these issues. Sadly too many cling to the idea that our Parliament and two party system is fit for purpose. I for one? I have no time for people who cannot see the obvious.
Total reset? That would be a coop or revolution then?
Does the guidance system on Martlet allow for indirect/guidance after launch firing? Or are they suggesting we use Martlet in some other way i.e. roof mounted on vehicles (similar to TOW) or fired from drones (like Camcopter S-100)?
Normally Martlet has to be guided by the shooter towards the target, so must maintain line of sight. However technically Martlet can be guided on to the target by a third party, so long as they have the right command unit and the missile’s code. Thales has shown in the past Martlet with different types of seeker, including semi-active laser homing (SALH), as well as an infrared seeker. These would allow either third party targeting or fire and forget.
I heard an interesting comment by Mark Galeotti recently when he said that politicians simply don’t believe that Russia will attack a NATO country and this is really why they are resistant to significant increases in defence expenditure.
Russia is unlikely to attack NATO until they’ve recapitalised their equipment and manpower losses from Ukraine to some degree, but that doesn’t mean after the window of grace has passed they won’t. Especially if you don’t assume an attack will come in the form of tanks just rolling across the border. We’re much more likely to see the kind of Mashkirovka that played out in 2014 than in 2022.
The Baltic states are particularly weak to Mashkirovka, having such large ethic Russia populations. Russia sending tanks over a as you say is simple for NATO to get together and respond under article five. Russia using, ethic Russian separatists as a mask for destabilising one or all of the Baltic states would be really difficult after all there is no real provision in the Alliance charter for intervention in a civil war or internal strife within a member state. The question really is would the Western European powers or the U.S. be willing to go kinetic against Russia if “all”… Read more »
So I think there’s some interesting thoughts to be put forward here, because while a 2014 (or 2008) Mashkirovka does present certain challenges it’s also not risk free for Russia. As you said, we’re unlikely to go kinetic against Russia for supplying a Russian seperatist movement in, let’s say Estonia. BUT we are very likely to go kinetic against the seperatist movement itself, especially if it’s a case of everyone knows it’s Russian controlled and supported, but Russia is denying it. I could point to the Korean War or Vietnam but handily we have much more recent example; during the… Read more »
Jonathan, Russia would not agree to troops under a NATO banner acting as peacekeepers in UKR post hostilities. Anyway that is classically a UN role. It has been said (by an American politician??) that Britain and France could undertake a peacekeeping role. However our contribution would be very much on the small side – perhaps just a single infantry battalion under a 1-star HQ with ‘enabler’ troops (Signals, Sappers, Loggies, REME etc).
Same sort of logic means you don’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic because it’s unsinkable. The huge intelligence failure of 2022 was confusing means with intent. Putin behaviour is based upon what he wants to do not what he can do. If Putin believes he can roll through the Suwalki gap and make strategic gains he will. You need to configure your defence to ensure that he never thinks he can win. However the reality today is that that despite 3 years of war Russia is far more capable of hurting the UK than the UK is able to… Read more »
Intelligence failure in 2022??? UK and US intelligence were fantastic. They predicted the invasion, the invasion routes and even the dates…how much more do you want? The only bit they got wrong, and no-one can blame them for it, was the scale of resistance from Ukraine and the sheer level of incompetence from the Russian’s… Putin cannot ‘roll through the Suwalki Gap’….it will take 30+ years to repair Russian ground forces and even then they will not be anywhere close to the scale of the reserves that Russia inherited from the Soviet Union. The Suwalki Gap is 400km from Russia… Read more »
In fairness the Titanic lifeboat situation was a lot more complicated than that. For starters no ocen liner in the 1910’s carried enough lifeboats for it’s entire passenger compliment, in part because it was known that you wouldn’t be able to evacuate all the passengers anyway (the Titanic sank incredibly slowly, it took nearly 3 hours and they STILL didn’t manage to launch all of it’s lifeboats. Compare that with other sinkings: Admiral Nakimov sank in 7 minutes, Empress of Ireland sank in 14). Also it’s lifeboat number where not unusual, eg RMS Mauritania had 16 Lifeboats compared to the… Read more »
That could well be true – that politicians don’t believe Russia would attack NATO. However, things can change quickly. Firstly, the US is no longer in a position to fight on two fronts, the USN only has about 90 escorts for starters. Secondly, the US sees China as their biggest threat – European NATO should be able to look after themselves. Trump is likely to get very explicit on those points. So the political landscape is changing and the rate of change might well accelerate on the 20th of January. Trouble is people can make decisions in an instant, but… Read more »
The issue I always point out is that the EU alone has a annual military budget of well north of 200 billion USD, it’s just spend really inefficently. I don’t for a second believe that Trump actually cares about European military capability, he cares about a talking point he can use to rile up his voter base and keep himself in power (hence why he will always move the goalposts on European defence spending). ~ The whole “RM to Norway thing” is now an artifact of cold war thinking that we need to get over, Sweden and Finland are now… Read more »
I wouldn’t put it past Russia to use more asymmetric tactics in attacking NATO countries. Where it blurs in to a grey area, which is just enough not to invoke NATO’s article 5.
This would be done in a similar way to the Ukrainian Donbass uprising and the take over of Crimea. Where there’s a nationalistic uprising and espionage from so called Russian speakers. The Baltic states would be very vulnerable to these types of attack, as they have a large “Russian” population.
Back in the 90’s I believe, there was a project (shelved) to have 3 “Terminally guided warheads” in an MLRS round. They would have had mm wave and IR seekers and were designed to be deployed at height on offset parachutes (if memory serves) so they wobbled and scanned a defined area.
Pitty we never followed through would be dead handy in Ukraine if we had a few thousand kicking about.
Bonus and SmART use the same style submunitions. They’ve had some use in Ukraine but, perhaps, so far don’t appear to have set the world alight. Definitely a useful capability to have but niche regardless.
lets hope we are still moving forward on increasing M270 numbers as the RA seems in really poor shape at the moment
I cannot believe it has taken three years to get to a “review?” We have all seen whst HIMARS and ATACMS has done in the Ukraine war.
When will the MOD be on the front foot with these sort of things?
We are in most respects…
We developed GMLRS in conjunction with the US years ago and have deployed it for 15 years…(the missile fired by HIMARS)
We never got involved with ATACMS, but are committed and a partner in the development of ATACMS longer ranged replacement PrSM.
GMLRS-ER will also be ordered to increase stocks and replace GMLRS…
LRAE and LPS are UK developments and are seperate. LRAE is a tech demonstrator that could lead to a real munition, LPS is a real munition utilising Spear technology.