An Anglo-American-French-Dutch team has unveiled the details of its bid to win a milestone order for the Royal Air Force's next generation of air-to-air guided missiles at Farnborough.
The bid has ignited a fierce battle between American missile giant Hughes and the newly-formed Matra-BAe Dynamics.
More is at stake in the contest for the future medium range air-to-air missile than simply the British order - the accepted bid is likely to be adopted as the standard weapon on the Eurofighter and may even replace the AIM-120 advanced medium range (AMRAAM) in US service.
Hughes UK is to head the team, which links France's state-owned Aerospatiale missiles with Dutch-based Fokker Special Products, Northern Ireland's Shorts Missile Systems and Anglo-French Thomson-Thorn Missile Electronics.
They hope to win the $800-900 million British order with their missile which combines the seeker unit of the world-beating Hughes AIM-120, with an Aerospatiale ramjet to provide extreme agility during intercepts.
The team says its missile will be more advanced than anything the USAF has.
Hughes is keen to stress that its missile is not an "American" missile but a true team effort. "Them-against-us" is not acceptable," says Hughes Europe chairman Robin Beard.
FMRAAM programme manager Don Targoff says the new missile would be "...designed in the UK, and was not just a set of drawings sent over from the US for replication. It will be designed, developed, manufactured, integrated and tested in the UK."
Aerospatiale Missile's communications manager Patrick Mercillon describes the bid team "... as a new way to do business with the Americans".
The use of the French company's liquid fuel ramjet propulsion system, previously fitted to the ASMP nuclear missile, is a "low risk" approach, he says. Mercillon describes the rival Matra-BAe Dynamics ramjet as a "paper proposal".
The use of a ramjet makes the missile significantly more manoeuvrable than weapons that use traditional rocket motors.
Targoff says linkage with the best-selling AMRAAM missile would bring great potential to sell the new weapon to existing AIM-120 customers.
Hughes are marketing their FMRAAM as the weapon that "no aircraft can outrun" says Targoff. The US Government is making the AIM-1200 seeker unit available to the UK at full US capability.
Source: Flight Daily News
