Page 28 - Leverage and Learn

Leverage Allied Investments and Combat Learning Experience in Modernizing the U.S. Military

The implementation of the Team Complex Weapon’s approach between Ministry of Defence (MoD) and
MBDA is through the Portfolio Management Agreement (PMA), which has been independently evaluated as
offering greater than £1Bn of benefit to MoD over their 10-year planning period.

The PMA aims to transform the way in which CW business is conducted by MoD with its main supplier. At the
heart of this is a joint approach to the delivery of the required capability based on an open exchange of
information and flexibility in the means of delivery.

http://www.mbda-systems.com/about-us/mission-strategy/team-complex-weapons/

This agreement has allowed the UK MoD to work with MBDA and other weapons suppliers to shape the
evolution of capabilities in close cooperation with the operators to shape ongoing capabilities. And such an
approach is absolutely central to the emergence of the next wave of weapons, namely software
upgradeable ones. The developer, manufacturer and the operator have to be in a close symbiotic relationship
to craft the kind of software transient advantage necessary to deal with peer competitors.

As the head of the USAF Materiel Command has put it with regard to software enabled weapons systems:

“The teams are there for life.

“I don’t mean that it’s one person, but we don’t think about putting a team together to do the development
and then push them out the door.

“That team stays with that system forever…

“We need to make the user the operational user and acceptance authority.

http://www.sldinfo.com/software-upgradeability-and-combat-dominance-general-ellen-pawlikowski-looks-
at-the-challenge/
The working relationships established under Team CW have facilitated the transition to the next phase of
weapons development, namely software upgradeable weapons. It has also allowed for the significant
evolution of capabilities to support the land wars, notably with the transition from Brimstone to Dual Mode
Seeker Brimstone.
One example is clearly the Meteor missile. It is an active radar guided beyond visual range air to air missile
which offers a multi-shot capability against long range maneuvering targets. It can do so in a heavy
electronic countermeasures environment at extended ranges owing to its air-breathing propulsion system

Longer range is crucial for a combat aircraft that has enhanced situational awareness with a significantly
greater radar reach than the current AMRAAM, and the Meteor certainly is considerably more appropriate
than the traditional AMRAAM for the F-35.

The new Meteor missile developed by MBDA is a representative of a new generation of air combat missiles
for a wide gamut of new air systems. It can be fitted on the F-35, the Eurofighter Typhoon, Rafale, Gripen
and other 21st century aircraft.

It is a software upgradeable missile which pairs nicely with the arrival of a software upgradeable aircraft
like the F-35.

Second Line of Defense

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