MBDA might have softened stand on the sale of Meteor BVRAAMs to India

| By

SOURCE: IDRW NEWS NETWORK

While India might be getting next generation Meteor Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM) along with Rafale fighter jets which will start arriving by end of this year, but, the possible sale of Meteor missile system for other platforms like Tejas Mk1A and Sukhoi-30MKI was brick walled by MBDA due to their reservations to limit their integrations only to European Radars.

Tejas Mk1A will feature Israeli ELTA’s EL/M-2052 AESA Fire Control Radar and MBDA has refused to provide source code for the missile system preventing their installation on them. IAF’s front-line Sukhoi-30MKI fighter jets always had Russian origin N011M passive electronically scanned array radar which is likely to be upgraded with Russian AESA Radar System in near future.

After multiple rounds of negotiation between Indian and MBDA officials, Stand on the integration of Meteor Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM) on non-European Radar specifically, Israeli and Russian couldn’t be resolved but according to industry sources close to idrw.org, MBDA has softened its rigid stand to avoid loss of sale of the weapon system and has agreed to provide integration help if India uses Indian made Fire control Radar like UTTAM AESA Radar for MWF or AMCA fighter jets.

Integration of the missile system is still not negotiable with Israeli or Russian Radar system but MBDA softening its stand on Indian Radar system will boost much needed to aerial capabilities of fighter jets like MWF and AMCA but it also might be too late since both projects are at least a decade away from entering production and India’s very own Solid Fuel Ducted Ramjet (SFDR) propulsion based missile system which is similar to Meteor will have completed its developmental trials.

NOTE : Article cannot be reproduced without written permission of idrw.org in any form