The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan |
Dirty Little Secrets
Buying The Meteor Of Tomorrow Today
France has ordered 200 Meteor high speed (ramjet), long-range air-to-air missiles for its Air Force and Navy Rafale fighters. The missiles will not arrive for seven years, because development is not complete. It was only five years ago that the Meteor missile passed, on its second try, a flight test. Meteor is a long range (over 100 kilometers) radar guided missile being developed by a European consortium (Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Sweden). It's the first such missile to use ramjet technology. This enables the missile to basically fly at the same speed as a rifle bullet (about one kilometer a second, or about Mach 4). Ramjet technology is tricky to handle, which is why no one else has gotten it to work for an air-to-air missile (although the Russians and Chinese are interested). Meteor has been in development for over a decade.
|
© 1998 - 2024 StrategyWorld.com. All rights Reserved. |