UK Defence Forum

The thread for UK complex weapons (guided weapons, essentially). Post news on Brimstone, Storm Shadow, Fire Shadow, SPEAR III, Martlet, Sea Venom, Sea Ceptor - whatever, as long as it's a complex weapon that doesn't have its own thread elsewhere.

I'll write up a more informative OP soon, but for now, some news on SPEAR 3:

UK Backs MBDA on Mini-Cruise Missile Requirement

LONDON - Britain's Defence Ministry is expected to extend MBDA’s assessment phase contract on the SPEAR Capability 3 missile program, leaving no room for the moment for Raytheon Systems to secure a foothold in the requirement for it’s Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II), according to a source familiar with the program.

Read More: http://www.defensenews.com/story/defens ... /81862964/

Excellent news, UK continuing to be a world leader with complex weapons, what are the chances we can make this more than a single platform weapon?

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I would agree we need to making missiles more platform flexible. in the same format so say a LMM round can be mated to a wildcat helicopter or a drone a DS30 mount or a HVM Aimer unit without any modification or special procedures.

What's the status of Fire Shadow now? Is it dead and buried?

A video from 2012 of it being tested:

Checked wiki and found this.

It was planned that 39th Regiment Royal Artillery would be the first unit to receive the system and would deploy it operationally in Afghanistan by 2012. This plan, however, never materialised.

In 2013, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported in its 2013 Major Projects Report that after spending £207 million, the Ministry of Defence had yet to decide on a future for the project. However, Fire Shadow was listed in the National Audit Office's 2014 Major Projects Report as being among the eleven largest equipment projects where the Ministry of Defence has taken the main decision to invest.

Performance was worse than expected, never got signed off to be deployed, no one has found the money or the will power to make the improvements and put into production.

We're not operating in the environment it was designed for any more, and it has clearly been put on the shelf maybe as a 'nice to have' for the future. Instead resources have been focused on arguably more important priorities, like finally equipping typhoon properly, so the shelving decision is reasonable. I never understood the benefits of the concept anyway

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i do find it interesting we didn't go down the route of ground/navalised versions of AMRAAM and meteor missiles

A meteor derivative could be nice for an air to ground role, but I would imagine the cost is prohibitive which is why we're going down the spear route. However by the time the seeker has been changed, and the warhead swapped there is not too much left.

There is also CAMM, a derivative of ASRAAM, which reportedly has a surface capability which is something I hope we explore.

meteor or AMRAAM as anti radiation missiles would be interesting what about as surface to air missiles? The Norwegians and Dutch operate AMRAAM in that role.

First of all, thanks to Armchair for opening the thread. These developments happen at such a glacial pace that is easy to miss key announcements (like the one included in the opening).

The AMRAAM ER is going to double the range of the related SAM systems; the height they can reach is still not great, but the system as a whole is very resilient and distributed
... well, not a UK system; I wonder how CAMM compares (it using an A2A derivative just like NASAMS)?

UK RAF Completes Brimstone 2 Operational Evaluation Trials on Tornado GR4

The United Kingdom Royal Air Force (RAF) has successfully conducted and completed Operational Evaluation trials of the Brimstone 2 fast-jet precision attack surface-to-air missile.

The trials are the final milestone before a 'Release to Service' and declaration of Initial Operating Capability (IOC) with the RAF Tornado GR4 multirole combat aircraft, which was originally intended for May 2016.

Read More: http://www.janes.com/article/59977/uk-r ... ornado-gr4

£411 million Investment in New Missile for UK's New Jets Sustains 700 UK Jobs

The Ministry of Defence has awarded a £411 million contract to develop a new missile for the UK’s future F-35B supersonic stealth aircraft.

The contract secures around 350 highly skilled missile engineering jobs across MBDA’s sites in Stevenage, Bristol and Lostock, with an equivalent number of jobs in the wider supply chain, and will draw on engineering and manufacturing expertise from companies across the UK.

Spear 3 is from the same family of weapons as Brimstone, currently being used by the RAF to combat Daesh in Syria and Iraq, but it packs a bigger punch and has a significantly increased range.

The contract, with MBDA, will enable four years of critical design and development work which will tailor the weapon for use within the internal weapons bay of F-35B, the world’s most advanced combat aircraft.

Read More: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/411- ... 00-uk-jobs

It is great news! Should be getting back into the SEAD game.

Next we need to get it on our ships, and on other nations F35's

Something I didn't know until TD's project; Spear fits into a CAMM VLS, that opens up some exciting possibilities to easily add an advanced mini cruise missile to our platforms with existing infrastructure. But that sounds way to logical, cross-platform is a dirty word for British complex weapons!

Not really big for SEAD, not until it has a radiation seeker and a mid-flight parachute for reactivated pursuit anyway. Until then it's just any other PGM whern it comes to that extremely specialist task.

Still not over the unbelievably stupid decision to retire ALARM and not place it on Typhoon and F-35. Possibly the single greatest mistake we've made in terms of offensive air that I can remember. We had a world leading missile and it just got thrown away to save pennies.

It was rapidly becoming not a world a world leading missile due to obsolescence and an out of date threat library.

RetroSicotte wrote:Not really big for SEAD, not until it has a radiation seeker and a mid-flight parachute for reactivated pursuit anyway

Well it isn't SEAD using the same tactics as ALARM, but building a strategy using combination of built in EW, low observability, and data link it will be a modern and capable SEAD system.

shark bait wrote:It is great news! Should be getting back into the SEAD game.

Next we need to get it on our ships, and on other nations F35's

Something I didn't know until TD's project; Spear fits into a CAMM VLS, that opens up some exciting possibilities to easily add an advanced mini cruise missile to our platforms with existing infrastructure. But that sounds way to logical, cross-platform is a dirty word for British complex weapons!

Less development to put JSM onto F35s (won't fit internally, but as an anti-ship weapon, and secondarily as a cruise missile that is not a huge penalty) and the VLS version of the same onto our ships?
... even though it is being built for mk 41 integration as things stand

RetroSicotte wrote:Still not over the unbelievably stupid decision to retire ALARM and not place it on Typhoon and F-35

Not enough range to do SEAD (without huge losses).

What is reactivated pursuit, btw? ALARM had the chute so that the trick of momentarily turning off the AD radars could be countered. Perhaps thta's what was meant?

ArmChairCivvy wrote:Less development to put JSM onto F35s (won't fit internally, but as an anti-ship weapon, and secondarily as a cruise missile that is not a huge penalty) and the VLS version of the same onto our ships?
... even though it is being built for mk 41 integration as things stand

It is, but they're a completely different class of weapon.

I believe there is a strong case for the JSM as a replacement for harpoon, coming deck and VLS launched, as well as returning to an air launched capability for F35 and P8. Much more modern than harpoon, and importantly the only one that ticks all the boxed for our platform.

The project with the french is a good thing, but it will be over two decades until it is integrated fleet wide, there has to be something in the interim. Upgraded harpoon could do it, but is that going to last 20 years? That’s what makes me think we need a new missile.

The UK has is managing without an air-launched anti-ship missile because the UK is managing without MPA’s and carriers. I would suggest once those capabilities are regenerated they will become the primary anti shipping platforms, due to the line of sight limitations of surface platforms, and the need to increase our sphere of influence. That will requite the F35 and P8 to either have their own anti-ship missiles, or be able to guide a surface launched missile to the target, neither of which our harpoon can do.

RetroSicotte wrote:Not really big for SEAD, not until it has a radiation seeker and a mid-flight parachute for reactivated pursuit anyway. Until then it's just any other PGM whern it comes to that extremely specialist task.

Still not over the unbelievably stupid decision to retire ALARM and not place it on Typhoon and F-35. Possibly the single greatest mistake we've made in terms of offensive air that I can remember. We had a world leading missile and it just got thrown away to save pennies.

Now, downsizer may want to rebuke me if i am wrong (and i'm sure he will ), but i don't believe there is anything that says a missile has to be anti-radition to be effective at SEAD/DEAD. ARMs were previously just the accepted solution, but it seems there is now more than one way to skin the cat and to do it just as effectively, if not better - stand-off precision weapons with advanced seekers/target recognition capabilities and an up-to-date threat library being cream of the crop in that sense.

The Armee de l'Air opted for just such a path ages ago yet no-one, at least not that i have seen, unduly doubts their ability to break in to an A2/AD zone when needed. In fact, you may well say we stand to be much better off than our French friends in pursuit of this approach as they lack the variety of stand-off guided weapons that we have/will have access to.

If ARMs were not the best way to do it, then they wouldn't still be being developed and utilised as the prime method by air forces with more experience than anyone else at doing it.

France and the UK got out of SEAD purely for money reasons. No other reason. Anything else and any "reasoning" is nothing short of spin and overly vague statements trying to save face and disguise a massive capability loss. Flying around within range of SAMs waiting for one of them to shoot at you so you can locate it to shoot at it is not a way to conduct SEAD against modern air networked denial systems.

Thankfully it's easy to get back into it. Buy some AGM-88E AARGM for the F-35B, which will be integrated with it by the US anyway. Just such a pity that a British based capability had to die for no reason.

A pretty slick CGI video of Brimstone being used on AH-64E (fearuing HMS Queen Elizabeth):

Wow. ^
And who knew QE could hover?! ( 0:34 )