News

2020-03-01

Spot on with Marte ER

MBDA’s Marte ER anti-ship missile recently completed its second firing carried out at the PISQ (Poligono Interforze del Salto di Quirra) test range in Sardinia, Italy. This firing confirmed the overall design and performance of the missile marking a critical milestone in its development path.

Compared to the first firing, which took place at the end of 2018, several additional features and functionalities were tested this time around. These included an integrated navigation system, proximity fly-over fuze, with weapon controller and actuation system in advanced configuration. The missile also featured the terminal guidance with a new seeker, engineered and developed by the MBDA Seeker Division.

The floating target was hit with “almost zero” miss distance after a flight of about 100 km. The missile pushed its envelope to the limit with several major manoeuvres including very low sea skimming at very high speed.

Hitting the target confirmed the perfect behaviour of the missile and the telemetry system recorded a huge amount of data. Flight data showed very good alignment with simulation outcomes.

Operational Flexibility

The Marte family has a strong and successful history both at domestic and international levels. It is a single product family that can cover several missions, offering a high level of operational flexibility in the area of maritime superiority, a domain where MBDA has been able to, throughout its long history, not only maintain but also grow and develop competencies and know-how.

The Marte ER programme is progressing at full speed in order to meet customers’ requirements and the full integration of the Marte ER on the Eurofighter Typhoon platform is proceeding at pace in order to implement an anti-ship capability onto the fighter.

Marte ER represents the third generation within the Marte family of missile systems and is derived from MARTE MK2/S, which is already in service with the Italian Navy on its NFH90 and AW101 helicopters. The main difference between the two lies in the introduction of a turbo engine in place of the rocket motor.

Marte ER missile is going to be integrated on Eurofighter Typhoon and other fast jets. Marte ER’s design takes into account that MARTE MK2/S is already qualified and installed on these two platforms. This offers advantages such as the need for the same mechanical, functional and electrical helicopter interfaces and doesn’t require platform hardware changes to manage the Marte ER missile, and only need software changes to the Store Management System (SMS) to manage longer range performance.

Furthermore, the helicopter, with the new version of SMS software, is able to operate both MARTE MK2/S and MARTE ER missiles and requires the same logistic support, in terms of benches, trolley and most handling and maintenance tools and schedule.

Comments () Views (12299 ) Print

Send To Friend