Douglas Barrie/LONDON
THE UK IS AIMING to include Germany and France as partners on a future medium-range air-to-air missile (FMRAAM) development, according to senior British Aerospace officials.
Contacts, at an industrial and defence ministry level, are aiming at examining establishing both a common FMRAAM requirement and an industrial consortium.
BAe already leads a team of GEC-Marconi, Saab Dynamics and Alenia in the S225X missile being proposed for the Royal Air Force's FMRAAM requirement. It is now trying to pull Deutsche Aerospace and Matra into this consortium.
Jeff Poole, BAe Dynamics business development and procurement director, says, "We are talking to Matra and to the Germans. We are hopeful of pulling together an attractive European development. There have also been exchanges between the UK, French and German defence ministries."
The UK Ministry of Defence is expected to release a request for proposals (RFP) to meet Staff Requirement (Air) 1239 for a missile to replace the BAe Skyflash semi-active air-to-air missile (AAM) in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
An earlier request for information elicited responses from BAe, which proposed its S225; Matra, offering a Mica derivative; Daimler-Benz Aerospace, bidding with its A3M AAM; and the US Government, with a development of the Hughes AIM-120. All the missiles proposed use rocket/ramjet propulsion.
The impending merger of BAe Dynamics and Matra's missile division is likely to see the Mica-based bid disappear. Poole views the FMRAAM as "...fundamentally a competition between a European and a US solution". BAe officials remain sceptical as to whether either a rocket/ramjet AIM-120 or Mica derivative is capable of fulfilling the demands of SR9A)1239.
John Onions, BAe business development executive for air weapons, claims that, marrying the front end of the AIM-120 with a rocket ramjet propulsion, given the carriage-size restraints of the Eurofighter 2000, will not meet the requirement.
Source: Flight International
