WATCH: Typhoon jet fires Meteor missile for the first time

Watch the Meteor missile being successfully launched from a Eurofighter Typhoon for the first time a few years ago.

Further trials of the Meteor missile have been successfully completed and continue this year as part of a programme of improvements which will further enhance the powerful swing-role capability of the Eurofighter Typhoon combat jet.

Meteor is an active radar guided beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile being developed by MBDA.

Meteor will offer a multi-shot capability against long range manoeuvring targets in a heavy electronic countermeasures (ECM) environment with range in excess of 100km.

It is intended to equip the Typhoons of the Royal Air Force and the Royal Saudi Air Force, Germany’s Luftwaffe, Spain’s Ejército del Aire and Italian Air Force, British and Italian F-35s, Dassault Rafale of French Armée de l’air, the Saab JAS 39 Gripen of the Swedish Air Force and Czech Air Force, and the Dassault Rafale of the Egyptian Air Force and the Qatar Air Force.

It entered service in the Swedish air force in April 2016, with the SwAF as the first operator of the missile due to most testing having been done on the JAS-39. It officially achieved initial operating capability with Swedish air force Gripens in July 2016, and it was announced at the Farnborough Air Show that the Czech air force would soon reach IOC as well.

According to MBDA, Meteor has three to six times the kinematic performance of current air-air missiles of its type. The key to Meteor’s performance is a throttleable ducted rocket (ramjet) manufactured by Bayern-Chemie of Germany.