Europe failing to compete with US in AAM market

From Jane's Defence Weekly

Aiming for the high ground

By Rob Hewson Editor Jane's Air-Launched Weapons

London

In the global market (excluding Russia and China) the US dominates the industrial and operational landscape in two ways. With the largest deployed air force it obviously has the largest weapons requirement. US manufacturers will always be supported by this single, fiercely protected market that guarantees sales. For example, the US Air Force (USAF) plans to replace its AIM-9M Sidewinder stocks (about 4,400 missiles) on an almost one-for-one basis with the AIM-9X (4,000 missiles) by 2012. No other customer has this kind of buying power.

Europe's missile industry watches the air-to-air weapons market with increasing frustration. The easy availability of integrated and affordable US missiles continues to eat up market share. Europe's air-to-air missile (AAM) developers hold impeccable high-tech credentials and have produced advanced and effective weapons. However, they have failed to develop sufficient critical mass while always struggling with delays and high costs. France has had a reliable market for its missiles but these weapons have been tied to French-built platforms. That route is now a dead end for future volume sales. The UK is arguably in a worse position, with no national aircraft industry to fall back on and exports to the US or Europe unlikely. Other projects, like the German-led IRIS-T, survive at the margins but the European missile industry is failing to effectively compete by not having a unified product line, or even a unified process.

A 'must have' package

One of the few instances where this is not true - and the only example in the AAM field - is MBDA Missile Systems' Meteor Beyond-Visual-Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM) programme. The Meteor should be a benchmark future weapon, one that pulls together all of Europe's skills into a 'must have' package. The threat to this rosy future is twofold. Meteor may yet arrive into a 'no need' world, where there is no effective air threat to warrant such a high-performance (and highly priced) missile.

The second, greater, danger is a 'no room' scenario where Meteor is quietly but effectively shut out from any US platform - specifically the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) - and thereby excluded from what could be the lion's share of the post-2020 combat aircraft market.