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British-French Entity Seen Rationalizing
Formed on November 1, 1996, MATRA BAe Dynamics is Europe's largest guided-weapons business, owned equally by British Aerospace plc in the UK and France's Lagardere Groupe SCA. It brought together the complementary range of products of British Aerospace Dynamics and MATRA Defense, and with about 6,000 employees, achieved combined first-year sales estimated at about $1.55 billion, with a funded backlog of around $4 billion.
Some rationalization of the product range of the two former companies may be expected in the coming months to eliminate inevitable overlaps in certain areas. In air-to-air roles, for example, the new 90-degree off-boresight ASRAAM close-combat missile of BAe Dynamics, achieving high agility by aerodynamic lift from its wingless tail-control lifting body, and using an advanced imaging infra-red seeker, is likely eventually to supersede the widely-used but earlier-generation Magic 2 developed and sold by MATRA. ASRAAM has already been ordered by the British and Australian forces, and if selected for RAF use its further-reaching BAeD-originated stable-mate, the beyond visual-range active radar-homing Meteor BVRAAM, will supplement MATRA's similarly capable MICA.
Some integration in air-to-surface roles has already been achieved with the MATRA BAeD Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG, which although optimized for specific UK and French long-range stand-off conventionally-armed attack missile requirements, are almost identical. As the basis of the bigger SCALP, 100 APACHE shorter-range dispenser missiles were ordered from MATRA BAeD for the French forces from a FFr1.5 billion ($250 million) multi-year contract in late 1997. An export version known as Black Shahine, with a reported 160-nm range, has also been offered to the United Arab Emirates with its recent Dassault Mirage 2000-9 package.
Following MATRA BAeD's February 1998 acquisition of a 30% stake in Daimler-Benz Aerospace's LFK guided-weapons subsidiary, SCALP and Storm Shadow inputs are now being applied to the 2,860-pound Taurus KEPD (kinetic-energy penetrating destroyer), 190-nm range ALCM under development with Bofors, for the German and Swedish air forces.
Although each of the original companies had its own anti-radar attack missile, in the form of BAeD's ALARM and MATRA's ARMAT, they appear sufficiently different in size and operating concepts to be complementary rather than competitive. Weighing only 584 pounds, ALARM can be carried by smaller aircraft or in greater numbers than the 1,212-pound ARMAT, although the latter has the advantage of a 330-pound warhead.
Discussions have been reported between France and Britain for a newer anti-radar
missile for service by 2005, possibly by upgrading ALARM with a dual-mode
seeker.
Among other air-to-surface missiles, BAeD brought with it the Microturbo
jet-propelled Sea Eagle anti-ship missile, derived from the earlier multirole
Martel, developed jointly with MATRA in the 1960s, and the smaller but highly-effective
helicopter-launched Sea Skua, for similar roles. Combat proven in the 1991
Gulf War, Sea Skua fills a useful gap in MATRA's original range of weapons.
MATRA BAeD now also fields a wide range of surface-to-air missiles, including
the UK element's short-range Rapier 2000 and its Jernas export version,
plus Sea Dart and Sea Wolf naval ShAMs. On the French side, the short-range
Mistral continues to be highly successful, although successors will be required
for the medium-range Crotale and Shahine. Cooperative development will presumably
continue on international programs such as the TriGAT ATM and Eurosam PAAMS.
By John Fricker
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