Page 48 - Australian Defence Mag Jul-Aug 2020

48 WEAPONS 5TH GEN
JULY/AUGUST 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
up significantly. We’re in a good position to start evolving our selection of weapons to meet the future environment and, more importantly, our platforms are in a great position to take advantage of the sort of weapons that will come down the track,” AIRCDRE Maso explained.
INDUSTRY OPPORTUNITIES
Several weapons in the ADF’s inventory will reach the end of their useful lives in coming years and there are opportunities for industry to bid for these replacement programs in the future. For example, the US has weapons replacement or enhancement programs underway to address obsolescence in weapons such as AIM-9X, AMRAAM, Harpoon and Hellfire and internation- al platform programs such as the F-35 are seeing an expansion from the baseline weapons to suit customers’ needs.
MBDA
The UK is integrating a range of MBDA weapons on their F-35s, some of which the company says may also interest Australia in coming years.
The Meteor Beyond Visual Range Air to Air Missile (BVRAAM) uses ramjet propulsion which head of MBDA’s Air Military Advisors Russ Martin says provides greater range and terminal speed over rocket-powered missiles in service today. Meteor is expected to be in-service on the F-35 in the 2024-2025 timeframe.
“It’s a game-changer, the higher the speed of the end- game the greater the manoeuvrability of the missile, the greater ability it has to hit the target and that’s where Mete- or comes into its own, because it isn’t decelerating through- out its time of flight,” Martin explained to ADM.
“That increases probability of a kill (Pk) and if you can achieve a higher Pk, you can reduce the number of missiles on your platform and it has a knock-on effect for your whole of logistics chain and footprint.”
Another weapon to be integrated with UK F-35’s is the SPEAR missile, designed to defeat high-end surface to air threats at stand-off ranges (more than 140km) in contested and congested scenarios. Up to eight weapons can be car- ried internally in the F-35 and MBDA is under contract for a future electronic warfare variant.
“Designed to work in step with the F-35, SPEAR’s syn- thetic aperture radar seeker will work with the aircraft’s APG-81 radar in any congested, contested or GPS-denied environment, in all weather,” Martin added. “When you look at the variety of threats and the complexity of hitting those threats in a GPS-denied environment, it will also be a game-changer.”
As mentioned, MBDA’s Brimstone will be the only certi- fied air-to-ground missile on the Protector when it enters UK service and MBDA’s head of UAS & FCAS Dave Postle- thwaite sees an opportunity for Australia to take advantage of this, rather than pay to integrate alternative weapons. Brimstone is already in service on several UK platforms and planned to be used on British Army AH-64E Apache attack helicopters.
“We see Brimstone as an opportunity to fulfil that com- mon weapon role across platforms, the UK timeframe fits neatly with Australia’s attack helicopter program (Land 4503). Brimstone is in full-rate production and will be around for a very long time,” Postlethwaite added.
ABOVE LEFT: The Meteor is currently in service with the Swedish Air Force, integrated with the Saab JAS-39 Gripen and is being integrated with the Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon. It will also equip the UK’s F-35B fleet in the 2024-2025 timeframe.
OPPOSITE PAGE: The US Navy’s Growlers will have their ALQ-99 pods replaced by the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) system in the coming years and the AGM-88 HARM and AGM- 88E AARGM will be replaced by the AARGM-ER. Australia has invested in the NGJ development program and is also considering a new anti-radiation weapon for its EA-18G fleet.
Lockheed Martin manufactures the Paveway II series of la- ser-guided munitions in service in Australia and the company is developing the Paveway II Plus variant. Lockheed Martin Aus- tralia business development senior manager, Missiles and Fire Control, James Heading, says Paveway II Plus offers a 50 per- cent improvement in Circular Error Probability (CEP) and 75 percent in Circular Error (CE) over legacy Paveway II systems.
“The changes are enhancement to the algorithms used for the guidance and control system and also to the signal process- ing in the electronics package,” Heading explained to ADM.
Lockheed Martin has also developed the Paragon next- generation dual-mode guided munition, with INS/GPS capability for use against fixed or moving targets in all- weather. Integration with the US Navy Super Hornet has already been completed.
The company is also developing a Hellfire successor, known as the Joint Air to Ground Missile (JAGM), which in 2018 achieved the US Milestone C award, ahead of a full rate production decision later this year.
As noted, one contender for Air 3023 is the company’s LRASM maritime strike weapon. “LRASM is already cleared on US Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and we’re planning to integrate it with the F-35 in the future, so we see it as a logical fit for Australia,” Heading said.
MBDA