Best guess either A) they are a lot cheaper than Meteor (about half the price), and so just better to use for Training/most situations or B) they are giving them to Ukraine
Because if UK Ben Wallace is to be believed, US is shafting European F-35s by delaying and overcharging for Meteor integration on F-35s. So you’ll need AMRAAMs in the interim.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/844661456048881664/1132433697463865354/2021.png
ah you just beat me to it, with better explanation, yeah the f35 aint compatible yet and so they propably are stocking up for them as well
Thats super scummy, but not unexpected from the US or its defence sector
Ah, America is always a bit salty about the Meteor being better than AMRAAM
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…
Haha
Americans really are their own worst enemy
Speaking of Meteor, someone should ought to create a Meteor missile thread. It seems there’s an upgraded Meteor now. Spiral 1.1?
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.
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.
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)