Meteor Missile

The Meteor is a fast and highly manoeuvrable Beyond Visual Range Air to Air Missile (BVRAAM) air-to-air weapon. Guidance is provided by an active radar seeker benefiting from enhanced technologies drawn from the MBDA Aster and Mica missile programmes. The meteor was designed to equip the Euro fighter Typhoons of the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF), Germany’s Luftwaffe, Spain’s Ejercito del Aire and Italy’s Aeronautica Militare Italiana, the British and Italian F-35s (both in the Air Force and Navy), the Dassault Rafales of France’s Armee de l’Air and Marine Nationale, and the Saab JAS 39 Gripens of Sweden’s Flygvapnet.

The missile is allocated targets from the launch aircraft radar and is capable of engaging air targets autonomously by night or day, in all weather and in severe electronic warfare environments. The increasing proliferation of state of the art Air to Air threats, that are challenging the already in service Air to Air combat system is a critical challenge for modern Air Forces which is answered by the Meteor. The missile’s ramjet propulsion system gives Meteor its high speed performance and the energy to defeat fast, manoeuvring targets at long range.

Meteor is equipped with both a proximity and impact fuse to ensure total target destruction in all circumstances. The missile trajectory is controlled aerodynamically using four rear-mounted fins. Meteor’s control principles are intended to allow high turn rates while maintaining intake and propulsion performance. MBDA Meteor is capable of engaging air targets autonomously, whether fighters, bombers, transport aircraft or cruise missiles by using its active radar seeker by day or night and in all weather or dense EW (Electronic Warfare) environments.

Meteor’s solid fuel variable-flow rocket/ramjet propulsion system will ensure a range in excess of 100 km and a speed of more than Mach 4 and high terminal velocity. Even when launched from extreme stand-off ranges, the missile will have the energy in the end game to defeat fast, manoeuvring targets. To ensure total target destruction, the missile is equipped with both proximity and impact fuses and a fragmentation warhead that is detonated at the optimum point to aximise lethality. Guidance is ISN, two-way data link and active Ku-band radar seeker. It can receive targeting data after launch from the launching fighter or another fighter. The two-way data-link partially solves the IFF problem at long ranges. It is designed to defeat current and future threats; Meteor provides the long stand-off range and high kill probability which combine to ensure air superiority and pilot survivability.