The World's Best Aircraft-Killer Missile is Now in Service (And Its Not American)
Robert Beckhusen
July 23, 2016
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The technical details of air-to-air missiles are extremely complicated, but the concept is simple — destroy your target before the target destroys you.
One way to improve the odds is to add an air-breathing ramjet engine to give the weapon a boost. That’s the design philosophy behind the Meteor, a 419-pound rail-launched MiG killer which entered service for the first time with the Swedish air force on July 11.
Meteor is strongly associated with Sweden, although it’s very much a broader European project with the missile conglomerate MBDA working as the manufacturer. Sweden is the first country to make the Meteor operational, but Britain, Italy, Spain, Germany and France are next.
Germany, Spain and Britain intend to equip Meteors on their Eurofighter Typhoons. France will get the missiles for its Rafales. F-35 Joint Strike Fighters could follow.
That Sweden has high-tech missiles might seem unusual.
The country is neutral, and its air force hasn’t fired a shot in anger since the Congo crisis in the early 1960s. But Sweden is a major weapons exporter — the 12th largest according to 2014 data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Sweden works closely with the NATO alliance during military exercises. And in May, the Swedish parliament ratified an agreement allowing NATO more room to conduct exercises in the country.
The reason is clearly Russia, which has repeatedly violated Sweden’s airspace and carried out simulated
nuclear attack runs on the country. Although greater cooperation with the alliance is controversial within Sweden.
MBDA designed the Meteor to work with the F-35. But as of now, the Block 4 software needed to fire it from the stealth jet isn’t available — and won’t be until the early 2020s in the best case scenario. In May 2016, the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned that the F-35’s software’s “cost, schedule and performance goals” were at risk.
By the time the Pentagon sorts that out, the Meteor will have served for years … with the Gripen.
This first appeared in WarIsBoring here.
Image: Creative Commons.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...raft-killer-missile-now-service-its-not-17100
