Thats super scummy, but not unexpected from the US or its defence sector
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Ah, America is always a bit salty about the Meteor being better than AMRAAM
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The funniest part about it is the Americans had a meteor equivalent in the works to replace the AIM-54, but killed it back in 1992 becausr of their good ol’
“nobody will ever catch up to our technological genius, and so why pay more for better?” Mentality…
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Haha
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Americans really are their own worst enemy
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Speaking of Meteor, someone should ought to create a Meteor missile thread. It seems there’s an upgraded Meteor now. Spiral 1.1?
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End of the Cold War be like.
No one was remotely close to the USA or even on the horizon to catch up in the early 90s.
I don’t think there is much need currently. We won’t see something like Meteor for years, even after the Typhoon is added. If it at all. From what I Know. It has no equal, especially from the Russians. So might never get added
Years of document collecting might be needed for such a classified missile though. Took about 2 years of efforts for me to gather enough information on the MICA missiles, which are decades old and still haven’t gotten to where I need it to be yet. You can imagine the amount of effort/time needed for Meteor.
I doubt there is actually that much available, at least none that Gaijin would consider “primary sources”
Good thing Gaijin also accepts secondary sources.
Pretty sure the chinese have things with longer ranges, as for if the seeker is as good, who knows. I kinda doubt it though considering China has predominantly copied everything they have from the Russians with some iteration to it
The Meteor would not be what it is today without Hughes transfer of variable flow ducted ramjet technology to the UK in 1995. Hughes had to share 10 year old research and technology born from programs the US decided they weren’t interested in.
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That really hasn’t been true since the late 90s, now Russia’s been trying to spy on China’s flanker developments and the Chinese missiles far outpace anything else with solid propellant currently.
That’s why the US advanced procurement of AIM-260. China developed the first air cooled AESA radars, they’re clearly well and ahead of Russia.
MBDA does not claim to have the longest ranged missile, but claims that the Meteor missile provides unmatched endgame maneuverability as well as the highest no-escape zone out of any modern missile today, which could very much be true simply just because of the design of the missile. The Meteor would still be burning and providing thrust against maneuvering targets long after anything the Chinese have. In that sense, there is no equal.
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It might be what’s needed to give 4th gen European deltas an upper-hand against 5th gen Chinese/Russian stealth jets.
Dual pulse missiles that are larger kind of counter this at the side-effect of being… larger.
China has a lot of those… (PL-15, PL-17, PL-21, etc)
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Russia has R-37M? lol that is more than equal to the Meteor… it’s better…
There is also the R-77T and R-77-1 variant with ramjet they could add even if they haven’t seen service.
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China and Russia have 5th gens? I thought they had photocopies of 5th gens that may or may not be that much better than most 4th gens
Is R-37M a throttleable ramjet? If not, dual and pulse missiles cannot provide what missiles like the Meteor can. The Meteor is advertised to have the computer of the missile working with the motor unlike those missiles. It’ll monitor what the target is doing based on datalink, and even after acquiring the target with its own seeker, and determine whether to increase the thrust while shortening the burn-time. The same flexibility and endgame maneuverability isn’t provided by those other missiles. If needed, if the target is close, it’ll increase the thrust to quickly close the distance knowing that it doesn’t need the extra burn-time.
AFAIK, Chinese and Russian missiles simply just expends all of their fuel and provides thrust at one time.
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