PARIS — Europe may have to wait for its own capability to suppress long-range enemy air defenses until at least 2033, with the expected arrival of a new high-speed maneuverable missile from MBDA, according to military experts at the Paris Defence and Strategy Forum last week.
The French Air Force currently lacks a real capability for suppression of enemy air defenses, or SEAD, and that capability should be restored from 2033 with an upgrade of the Rafale jet together with the RJ10 missile being developed by MBDA, according to Col. Guillaume Kubala, a fighter pilot and aerospace expert at the French Armed Forces Ministry’s directorate for international relations and strategy. He was speaking at a March 13 round table on deep strike and air superiority here.
The RJ10 is part of the French-British Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon long-range strike project and will perform the mission of suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses, according to Pierre-Marie Belleau, who oversees the deep strike portfolio at MBDA. Current capabilities are “a little limited compared to existing air defenses,” he said.
The goal is for the missile to arrive at the same time as the future F5 standard for the Rafale, Belleau said during the round table, without providing an exact date.
“This missile must arrive concomitantly with Rafale’s F5 standard,” Belleau said, adding that’s a factor driving the development schedule. “We would like it to go faster, but we have to be realistic.”
France retired the AS.37 Martel radar-homing missile in the late 1990s, leaving the country without a dedicated anti-radar capability. Some European NATO partners including Germany rely on variants of the U.S.-made AGM-88 missile for anti-radar-based SEAD.
For Europe to rebuild offensive capabilities is “extremely important,” including weapons able to destroy enemy air-defense batteries, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation Adm. Pierre Vandier said in a press briefing at the Paris forum last week.
“SEAD today clearly has to be the number one priority,” said Lt. Col. Adrien Gorremans, a French Air Force officer and military fellow at IFRI, the French Institute for International Relations. “I believe that’s also what our leaders are defending quite strongly.”
The RJ10 will be the new SEAD missile for integration on the Rafale F5 by 2035, and offensive electronic warfare will also be needed to saturate airspace and jam enemy detection, Air and Space Force Chief of Staff Gen. Jérôme Bellanger told Le Figaro in an interview in February.
France plans to upgrade its jets to the F5 standard in the 2030s, and said in October it had awarded the first contracts for the Rafale enhancements.
The F5 standard is set to integrate a stealthy combat drone as a so-called loyal wingman for the Rafale by 2033, while the upgraded jet will also carry the future ASN4G hypersonic nuclear missile MBDA is working on. The new standard will include the Thales-developed next-generation RBE2 XG radar including gallium nitride technology and artificial intelligence.
The F5 standard will allow for “a reactive and autonomous automated targeting loop,” providing the ability to target increasingly mobile surface-to-air systems, according to Kubala. Unmanned combat aerial vehicles and remote carriers operating “much deeper into the territory” could handle target acquisition, he said.
As part of the FC/AWS program, MBDA is working on two complementary missiles: the RJ10 that travels at high supersonic speeds while remaining maneuverable, and the TP15 stealthy subsonic missile. Italy is set to join France and the U.K. this year for the development and manufacturing phases of the project.
MBDA displayed mockups of both missiles at the Euronaval conference in November.
Until the arrival of the new missiles, the SCALP-EG will remain the only air-launched cruise missile in service with the French Air Force into the start of the next decade, Kubala said.
Integrated air-defense systems “have evolved completely” in recent years, with greater range and different means to detect and intercept, according to Kubala. That creates a need for more powerful and technologically advanced missiles. “If we’re relying on 20-year old technology, we have to ask ourselves how credible our SEAD and our capabilities are.”
Both Gorremans and Kubala pointed out that that fighter jets as well as cruise missiles can still avoid air defenses by flying close to the ground, allowing current systems to remain credible.
The biggest challenge for deep-strike missiles currently is survivability, and thus the ability to penetrate enemy defenses, Belleau said. Solutions include a high-speed, maneuvering vector sufficiently evasive in the terminal phase to defeat defenses; a stealthy missile with low radar and infrared visibility; or collaborative strike that combines different vectors to saturate air defenses.
If a deep-strike capability is unable to penetrate ground-based air defenses, it won’t be credible, Kubala said. He said the role of the RJ10 would be to neutralize long-range air defenses, opening the way for cruise missiles and other arms.
The high-speed, highly maneuverable missile represents an “extremely complicated” technical challenge, according to Belleau. Maintaining speed and maneuverability requires adjustable propulsion for the entire flight.
The RJ10 will have ramjet propulsion and operate at high supersonic speeds but below Mach 5, according to MBDA. The company already makes the ramjet-powered Meteor, considered by analysts to be one of the best beyond-visual-range, air-to-air missiles in operation.
Hypersonic missiles follow the same logic of being fast and maneuverable, even if they’re at the high end in terms of speed, Belleau said. He cited the “absolutely enormous” per-unit cost cited by the U.S. for the Dark Eagle hypersonic missile – a 2023 Congressional Budget Office report estimated procurement cost per missile at $41 million spread over a purchase of 300 missiles.
The cost of a cruise missile is in the range of €2 million to €3 million, according to Gorremans.
France is working with Germany, Italy and Poland, the U.K. and Sweden on the European Long-range Strike Approach project, or ELSA, which Kubala said aims to offer a “realistic” response to the deep-strike requirement in terms of cost, deadlines, performance and interoperability. MBDA is offering a ground-launched version of its naval cruise missile as a short-term option for the project.
The aim is to have a complete deep-strike chain, including targeting, penetration of defenses as well as ground-to-ground, air-to-ground and anti-ship assets, Kubala said.
The first ELSA projects “should see the light of day” in coming months, Kubala said during the round table. He declined to provide details.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
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