The Ministry of Defence has awarded a £20 million contract to Lockheed Martin UK to deliver Project Bowline, a hypersonic target programme supporting the development and testing of missile defence systems against advanced threats, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative member for Huntingdon, asked which company is developing Project Bowline.
Luke Pollard, the Minister of State for Defence, said: “The Ministry of Defence awarded a £20 million contract to Lockheed Martin UK to deliver Project Bowline, a hypersonic target programme designed to support the development and testing of missile defence systems against advanced threats.”
Nothing in missile defence can be proved without a target to shoot at. An interceptor must be tested against something that behaves like the threat, and a hypersonic glide vehicle or manoeuvring reentry vehicle behaves very differently from the ballistic targets Western ranges have used for decades. Flying something at those speeds, on those trajectories, repeatably and safely, is a serious engineering problem in its own right.
Britain has not previously had a sovereign capability of this kind, and the requirement follows from Russian and Chinese fielding of weapons designed to complicate interception, including the Russian Kinzhal and Zircon and the Chinese DF-17, and from British work on counter-hypersonic effectors running alongside the Team Hypersonics programme that covers offensive systems.
At £20 million this is a development and demonstration programme and not a production order for a target fleet, which is the normal sequence at this stage, and the output is likely to be a small number of flights that establish whether the approach works.
Yet again using American companies when this is vital we build it and own it ourselves and develop the know how and skill base for this tech. Not rely on American food will who can switch it off any time they like.
It for a target. Not the missile.
Yeah I agree, it’s only a target drone. If we are going to give the US defence contracts then we should make sure it’s for nothing vital.
I thought QuinteQ were doing this?
They have target drones, best in the world
Yeah I thought QuinteQ were doing targets to simulate hypersonic s aswell.
They used to say several hundred million to design an develop a new missile. This is ground breaking technology. I wonder what £20M gets you?
Whoops, should read more carefully, this is only for a target. Still makes you wonder what we will shoot at it with.
Aster 30 block 1 initially. I suspect we will also be heavily involved in the testing for Freya from Firepoint as well soon.
It may be due to Freya that we are suddenly seeing this contract starting. LM provides the US missile Defence agency with most of its ballistic missile targets.
It’s Eurosam responsibility to test Aster 30, it must be something else, but for 20m is probably not that many targets, maybe testing Viper
Jobs for boys at LM? Worked so well at GD…
Problem is they can’t make hypersonics