Timmymagic wrote:That is true. But it's likely that the JNAAM if it leads to a production variant will be the de-facto Meteor mk.2. MBDA will want to market it to keep the pole position, and if you're an airforce in the market for a top range missile and prepared to pay the price you'll want the best.
Wasn't trying to knock the UK. You are correct that the UK is getting payoff from the decision to identify a2a missiles as something to be invested in as part of the complex weapons suite and to become a national expertise. And I do note that investment was largely with MBDA, a multi-national company.
As a flip side of the same coin, you can see the downside in places where there are no areas where a national expertise was declared to be worthwhile. The army, for example, the current mess over there is pretty bad with just about every important piece of equipment becoming obsolete with no homegrown capability to replace. What a different it would have been if say, armored vehicles had been labelled a strategic interest with a line of funding similar to complex weapons.
We can only dream of a combined Bae/Rheinmetal company founded 20 years ago, enjoying consistent MoD funding, that had produced a steady stream of armored vehicles that had equipped both the German and UK armies for all that time, as well as generating exports. Not too late to start. I think the UK still has expertise in some aspects of AFV development to bring to the table.