Dual-Mode Brimstone targeted at fast boat threat

IHS Jane's ^ | 22 February, 2011

[sukhoi-30mki]

Dual-Mode Brimstone targeted at fast boat threat

Tuesday, 22 February, 2011

European missile house MBDA (Hall 7 Stand A10) has unveiled plans for its Dual-Mode Brimstone (DMB) missile to take on an anti-surface warfare role to counter swarming fast inshore attack craft (FIAC) threats.

An enhanced derivative of MBDA’s Brimstone anti-armour missile, DMB was conceived to meet a UK urgent operational requirement (UOR) for a high-precision close air support weapon to be used against both static and moving ground targets.

MBDA met this requirement by developing a dual-mode seeker, combining millimetric wave (mmW) radar and semiactive laser (SAL) techniques, with the resultant DMB weapon entering operational service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in December 2008.

The company has subsequently undertaken privately funded test and trials work to evaluate the performance of this missile in a putative counter-FIAC role. This reflects feedback from potential customers concerned about the vulnerability of shipping and coastal infrastructures to the FIAC threat.

In October 2010, MBDA undertook preliminary trials at the Aberporth range in west Wales to evaluate the ability of the DMB seeker to track small boat targets at sea. The successful results of these tests have cleared the way for live end-to-end trials with air-launched weapons to be conducted around mid-2011.

These live-fire trials are a company-funded initiative, but will be run in cooperation with the UK Ministry of Defence using a Tornado trials aircraft from 41 Squadron, the RAF’s Fast Jet and Weapons Operational Evaluation Unit.

According to MBDA, the DMB missile would exploit the area mode of its ‘legacy’ mmW seeker,

[sukhoi-30mki]

This MBDA concept shows an AS595 Panther helicopter equipped with the Dual-Mode Brimstone weapon

[JRandomFreeper]

They should live-fire test this on Somali pirates.

/johnny