All through the development of Eurofighter it was thought that Britain would be utilising the American AMRAAM as its solution for a Medium Range Air to Air Missile (MRAAM). However, in February 1994 the British MoD issued a Request For Information (RoI) concerning the possibility for development of a new advanced replacement for AMRAAM. During 1995 Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden noted that their requirements for a new missile generally matched those of the UK and subsequently the British MoD offered all of them access to examine the proposals. The results of the RoI led the MoD to request bids in December 1995 under SR(A)-1239 for full development of a replacement to AMRAAM. Initially the program was titled FMRAAM or Future Medium Range Air to Air Missile but later was re-designated BVRAAM or Beyond Visual Range Air to Air Missile. The program called for a number of improvements over AMRAAM including greater range (80nm+), a more linear velocity profile and improved guidance systems.

The tendering process led to two bids, one from a U.S. based consortium headed by Raytheon with Shorts, Aerospatiale, Fokker and Thomson Thorn with the FMRAAM/ERAAM and another from a European consortium led by Matra-BAe Dynamics called Meteor.

By 1997 it had become clear that the technical requirements of BVRAAM were causing both consortia a number of troubles. In an attempt to offset or prevent problems the British MoD issued Risk Assessment and Reduction contracts in August 1997. These contracts led to revised bids being produced in Spring 1998. Following this a Letter of Intent (LoI) was signed between Britain, Germany, Spain, Sweden and France covering possible joint development, aquisition and other logistical and export considerations of a BVRAAM system.

The situation was made more complex in late 1998/early 1999 by the announcement of Germany to start finance of its own MRAAM solution, termed EURAAM (basically a development of the original A3M programme using a Bayern Chemie boron based ram-rocket engine). A more cynical person may suggest the German decision to push ahead with development of EURAAM was really a ploy to sway Britain into selecting the European Meteor project. Final proposals from both Meteor and FMRAAM were given to the MoD in September 1999. Up till the end of March 2000 Britain had invested approximately £21M in the BVRAAM project.

On May 16^th 2000 the British Government finally announced that it had selected Meteor as the ABVRAAM (Advanced BVRAAM) solution. The project will be led by MBDA (the company formed by the merger of Matra-BAe Dynamics, Aerospatiale Missiles and Alenia-Marconi's missile interests) under direct contract to the UK. The detailed reasons as to why Meteor was selected over FMRAAM/ERAAM+ do not appear to have been made fully public at present. However the Chief of Defence Procurement (CDP) did report to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee that there was conclusive evidence that Meteor was technically superior to FMRAAM. In addition the MoD had apparently expressed considerable concern over selecting the ERAAM+ which at some later point would need to be upgraded to full FMRAAM capability. The problem here laying with the differing operational requirments and aircraft between the United States and United Kingdom. Other issues were also cited under the MoDs assessment criteria most noteably the potential vetoing of sales of FMRAAM by the United States to foreign nations (a particular problem given the likely possibility of Eurofighter competing against U.S. aircraft on the international market).

MBDA led consortium Meteor © MBDA

The Meteor system had arisen during the mid-80's through early 90's from a BAe, Marconi, Alenia and SAAB joint project termed, S225X. This examined a range of new systems and technologies such as ram-rocket propulsion, two way datalinks, dual band and dual type seekers, stealth technology and improved resistance to countermeasures. Similarly DASA and Bayern Chemie of Germany had been working on the A3M (or Advanced Air to Air Missile) which much like S225X incorporated a new ram-rocket motor. In 1996 BAe/Marconi/SAAB and Alenia joined forces with Matra of France (with whom BAe had developed the MICA missile) and LFK (part of DASA) of Germany (and subsequently CASA of Spain). This yielded the Meteor MRAAM which the consortium subsequently put forward as their solution to the BVRAAM project. In a surprise move in November 1999 Boeing Inc. joined the consortium giving the missile a potential foot hold in the U.S. market.

Meteor comprises of essentially four sections; radome, missile electronics and fuze, warhead and rocket ramjet enclosed within a stealthy, low drag, lightweight body. The radome encloses the MBDA/Thales X-band radar seeker which will be a development of the system employed on the French Mica missile. As well as the active mode it may also be possible that the system can operate passively in the K-band given the consortiums previous research interests. The next section encloses the missiles electronics, SAAB Dynamics laser proximity/impact fuze system, power unit and battery, behind this lies the fragmentation warhead. The rear section comprises a Bayern Chemie/Royal Ordnance solid Boron fuelled Variable Flow Ducted Ram-rocket (VFDR) motor, the datalink package and on the rear of the missile the datalink antenna. The missile has 6 flight and control surfaces, two wings are mounted centrally on the upper body and there are four fins mounted at the rear, guidance is by bank to turn. For mid-course navigation the weapon can utilise its own Inertial Navigation System combined with information provided by the launch, or any friendly aircraft via the two way datalink. During the terminal phase the active radar is used which employs advanced proportional based navigation software.

At the Paris Air Show in June 2001, France and Sweden signed an Memorandum of Understanting over the development and procurement of Meteor with the UK (which will act as project lead). Italy signed the MoU in September 2001 with Spain signing up on the 11^th December 2001. Only Germany has yet to sign up to the project and this is expected in the near future. Assuming German participation the preliminary workshare should equate to: 34.6% Britain, 21% Germany, 12.4% France, 12% Italy, 10% Sweden and 10% Spain. The exact figures will depend on both monetary and technological contributions. The British MoD is understood to be setting extremely tight conditions on target points for Meteor. These will cover the following criteria:

• Repetition of sucessfull demonstrations of the ram-rocket motor through all anticipated flight profiles
• Demonstration of sucessfull guidance capability to ensure the missile can aquire and engage a target across its operating range
• Demonstration of sucessfull data-linkage between the launch aircraft and missile minimising launch and aquisition errors
• An ability to complete engagement of the target within harsh countermeasure environments.

Should these targets not be met the consortium could face financial penalties and even the potential cancellation of the project.

The numerous delays in the program have led to a very significant slip in the In-Service Date (ISD). Originally the UK planned for an ISD of 2005, matching the operational date for the first Eurofighter squadron. This date slipped to 2007 following the first Risk Reduction contracts and a subsequent date of 2008 was set for likely operational capability. However this date has now slipped greatly to a 90% confidence of an ISD of August 2012, with 50% confidence for September 2011. This will lead to a significant gap between Eurofighter service entry (2005) and the deployment of the new missile. To fill this hole the Government also announced its intention to purchase an additional classified number of AMRAAMs to tide the force over during the transition period. The total anticipated UK expenditure between 2001 and 2012 is currently put at approximately £1.4B (including the purchase of new AMRAAM stocks).

Raytheon/Shorts : FMRAAM

Raytheon/Shorts FMRAAM © Raytheon

The FMRAAM system (which has lost out to Meteor as the ABVRAAM solution) proposed by Hughes (now part of Raytheon) of the United States teamed with Shorts Missiles of Britain and Aérospatiale and Thomson-Thorn of France was a significantly enhanced variant of AMRAAM. Like the Meteor the range demands of the BVRAAM requirement resulted in FMRAAM also utilising a ram-rocket motor. The particular motor used being Aérospatiale's liquid fuelled RASCAL (RAmjet for Small CALibre) system.

Other improvements over the existing AMRAAM included an upgraded and miniaturised seeker, two way datalink and improved ECM resistance. In addition a number of improvements aimed at reducing the missiles RCS (note the diamond shaped classed intakes on the picture) where also introduced. During the BVRAAM contest Raytheon independently proposed a number of these upgrades to the US Air Force and Navy.

In an apparent attempt to mitigate design, production and performance issues after the issuing of the risk reduction contracts Raytheon proposed an intermediary solution missile, ERAAM (Extended Range Air to Air Missile). This system lacked the ram-rocket motor (which remained one of the major technological sticking points for BVRAAM, including Meteor) instead using a more standard (and less risky) 6" dual-burn solid rocket. This they suggested would yield an improvement over AMRAAM, offer little R&D or production risk and be available sooner than FMRAAM (the plan being to upgrade stocks of ERAAM to an FMRAAM standard at some future point as technology and money allowed).

It remains unclear whether FMRAAM as originally proposed will see the light of day now Meteor has been selected by Europe. Raytheon is continuing its improvement program for AMRAAM and some of the features of ERAAM/FMRAAM may be rolled into this if funding allows.

* : Note that all ranges quoted are based on mean figures from various data sources. Actual achievable range will depend on a great number of factors and may be no where near those quoted.