Meteor takes to the skies

The new Meteor air-air missile has flown aboard three different aircraft in three different countries, all in the same week; this new hypersonic beyond visual range missile may become part of the armoury of the Joint Strike Fighter.
Meteor, the new European ramjet-powered Beyond-visual-range air-to-air (BVRAAM) hypersonic missile, has successfully undertaken key integration flights on three different types of combat aircraft, paving the way for the first air-launched live firings in the first half of this year.

Qualification of the Meteor is scheduled for the first quarter of 2007. Entry into service is set for 2010, going from present combat aircraft to the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).

Originally designed to defeat the emerging threat from new BVRAAMs, Meteor has kept on track and progressed steadily. The Mach 4 missile system has proved compatible for integration on existing NATO aircraft and operationally capable of excelling in all future combat scenarios. MBDA, the manufacturing consortium which includes British, French and Italian missile makers, in a recent statement for the first time formally announced: "Meteor has the potential to add to the air-to-air capability for the next-generation combat platform, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter."

Britain, France and Germany, together with Sweden, Italy and Spain, joined forces to launch the project in order to have access to technology and expertise across Europe. The UK Defence Procurement Agency signed the Meteor contract on 23rd December 2002 on behalf of the six nations. All six ordered the Meteor for their current fighter fleets, namely the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Saab Gripen and the Rafale combat aircraft. And the United Kingdom took the lead in requesting MBDA to configure Meteor for the Royal Air Force's future F-35B Joint Strike Fighter squadrons. France also ordered the new missile for both the French Air Force and the French Navy fleet air arm Rafale combat. Sweden and the other customers likewise ordered the Meteor for their respective air forces.

Mounted simultaneously in three different countries on three different platforms, the Meteor took to the skies in a week-long tripartite trial a fortnight before Christmas 2005. One missile was aboard a Eurofighter Typhoon taking off from RAF Coningsby, another aboard a Saab JAS 39 Gripen from the Swedish Air Force's Linkoping Air Base, and the third aboard a Dassault Avation Rafale combat aircraft catapulted from the French Navy's aircraft-carrier Charles de Gaulle cruising in the Mediterranean in heavy seas.

The flight tests all went on according to plan, said MBDA chief executive officer Marwan Lahoud, who hailed the trials as representing a major milestone in the development of the Meteor. And emphasising the importance that all three platforms flew in the same week, he indicated that the integration flights have "demonstrated the full significance of this international program."

Martin Evans, MBDA's Meteor multinational project director, stated: "These successful trial campaigns mark a significant achievement and watershed in the Meteor development program as the design phase matures with real flight hardware becoming available and undergoing true life testing on all three aircraft platforms. These trials also mark critical steps towards the first free-flight trials of Meteor in 2006, when the Air Launched Demonstrator firings will be conducted from the Gripen aircraft."

Starting with this month's Asian Aerospace 2006 air show in Singapore, MBDA is launching a sales offensive in the Asia-Pacific, chiefly targeting Australia, which is expected to buy the F-35A JSF, and Singapore which has ordered the Boeing F-15 Eagle ahead of its own expected purchase of the JSF.

MBDA officials say Meteor will prevail in air-air engagements within the 100km range, and they say they're looking forward to challenging Raytheon's AIM-120C AMRAAM which currently dominates the world BVRAAM market.

Meteor provides long stand-off range and high kill probability which combine to ensure pilot survivability, MBDA claims. The Mach 4 missile's ramjet propulsion system gives Meteor high-speed performance and energy to defeat fast, manoeuvring targets at very long range. Measuring 3.65m and weighing 185kg, the missile is equipped with both a proximity and impact fuze and a fragmentation warhead to maximize lethality. Guidance is provided by an active radar seeker benefiting from enhanced technologies developed for the MBDA Aster surface-air missile family as well as the Mica EM electro-magnetic homing and Mica IR infra red homing air-air missiles.

Allocated targets from the launch aircraft radar, Meteor is capable of engaging and shooting down hostile jet fighters and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV) at ranges exceeding 100 km, in all weather conditions and severe electronic warfare environments by day or night, says MBDA.

Furthermore, the manufacturer is adding a datalink that enables the weapon to send images from its imaging infra red seeker back to its host aircraft for battle damage assessment. This capability will be expanded in due course to include the integration of a two-way datalink allowing the round to be retargeted in flight.

The Eurofighter Typhoon, now in service with the British, German, Italian and Spanish air forces, can carry a total of six Meteor missiles - one under each wing and four on the semi-buried eject fuselage stations. That too goes for the Dassault Aviation Rafale aircraft in service with the French Air Force and Navy fleet air arm, as well as the Saab Jas 39 Gripen in service with the Swedish and Czech Republic air forces, and also ordered by the Hungarian and South African air forces.

The big export market of course is in the United States. But nothing is ever simple when it comes to EU-US trading and more particularly in the military market. Painstaking efforts, however, are persistently being pursued. And taking advantage of a growing movement towards closer military industrial cooperation and commercial agreements between the European Union and the United States, in recent years Boeing has approached MBDA for a tie-up. The American plane-maker's military and missile systems division in St Louis, Missouri, has talked of a Meteor marketing campaign in attempt to broker an MBDA breakthrough in the lucrative but tight-knit US market.

"Once Meteor is in the JSF inventory," said Mike Marks, vice-president for weapons programs at Boeing, "then we could qualify the missile for other US Air Force and US Navy programs." He named fighters such as the F/A-22 Raptor, F-15 Eagle and F/A-18E Super Hornet as potential users. While Boeing executives concede it will take work persuading US military officials to opt for a non US-designed missile, there is a lot at stake for the company. Boeing confidently hopes to secure an MBDA accord to produce US versions of the missile on American soil that could help press its case with the Pentagon.

The first trial of the Eurofighter Typhoon configured with Meteor was conducted by 17 Squadron, the UK Royal Air Force's Fast Jet and Weapons Operational Evaluation Unit, Martin Evans said. During this trial, two Meteor Ground Handling and Training Missile (GHTM) missiles were mounted on the aircraft's port and starboard forward fuselage stations. The GHTM, similar to the Environmental Data Gathering (EDG) and Avionics missiles but without instrumentation, tests how the aircraft handles a series of manoeuvres with the missile.

In Sweden, Saab Aerosystems tested a Meteor Avionics missile fitted to the port wing outboard rail station of the Gripen. As with the EDG missile, the Meteor Avionics missile represents all the dynamic properties of an operational missile but equally important it also behaves exactly like an operational missile with regard to the mechanical and electrical interfaces between the missile and the aircraft. This flight marked the first demonstration of Meteor's performance, specifically the active communications in both directions between the aircraft and the missile, according to Evans.

The French Air Force will use Meteor, but the trials carried out from the carrier Charles de Gaulle were chiefly for the French Navy's fleet air arm as well as for other carrier-capable navies such as the Royal Navy and with an eye on exports to carrier-equipped navies such as Italy and India. A much longer-term target is the US Navy, whose carrier-borne aircraft are always at the vanguard in any major conflict.

Altogether, 20 catapult launches were undertaken, as well as a number of "touch-and-go" touch downs and 20 arrested landings. For these tests, an EDG (Environmental Data Gathering) missile had been fitted to the Rafale, alternatively to its rail (under-wing) and eject (under-fuselage) stations. The EDG missile is an instrumented missile possessing all the dynamic properties of an operational missile in terms of size, weight and aerodynamic shape. With this missile, data on shock and vibration levels associated with the stress of catapult launch and deck arrest have been gathered and analysed as part of the full operational envelope, said Martin Evans.

The trials prepare for the next major milestone, the first firing of an Air-Launched Demonstration (ALD) variant of the missile early in 2006

The initial ALD firing will be carried out from the Gripen over the Vidsel range in Sweden. Unlike the GHTM, EDG and Avionics variants used during the December trials week, the ALD missile, though having the same functionality as the Avionics version in respect to its interface with the aircraft, will have a fully operational propulsion system and an autopilot capability enabling a pre-programmed flight to be conducted with full telemetry, says Martin Evans.

Created in 2001, MBDA has been enjoying a boom inherited from its founding partners, Britain's BAe Dynamics and France's Aerospatiale and Matra. Since the mergers of these companies, the European consortium has brought considerable improvements to existing air defence weaponry and developed new variants such as the Scalp-EG and VL Mica. The missile building conglomerate now boasts an annual turnover exceeding ?3.1 billion, with a forward order book of over ?13 billion and 70 customers worldwide.

As several European nations have purchased, or expect to buy, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fitted with Meteor missiles, MBDA is now eyeing the Asia-Pacific region as an emerging market for Meteor. China, however, a potential big customer, is excluded from this market under a European Union arms embargo imposed following the Tiananmen Square events several years ago. In recent years Beijing has been pressing France, Britain and other European countries for a repeal of the embargo, with no avail. Though France and Germany are known to be favourable, there is no question of easing, and still less lifting, the embargo in the foreseeable future, the EU Commission in Brussels ruled after latest summit talks between heads of state and governments.

By Gregor Ferguson, Adelaide and Orlando, Fl