In the past two or three years, MDBA (Matra BAE Dynamics Alenia) has announced upgrades to its Marte antiship missile, including an extended-range (about 72 nm) air-launched variant and a new ship-launched Mk 2/N. Italy, India, and the UAE are considered the most likely customers. MDBA also is prime on a number of Europe’s best- and longest-selling naval missiles, as well as those still in development, including:

• Aspide 2000 (as part of the Albatros Medium-Range Semi-Active Air-Defense System)
• Aster 15/30 surface-to-air and anti-missile missile;
• CAMM-M (Common Anti-Air Modular Missile), a next-generation all-weather replacement for the Sea Wolf and Rapier;
• Exocet, including the fourth-generation MM40 Block 3, for littoral warfare and coastal land attack;
• FASGW-ANL (Future Anti-Surface Guided Weapon-Anti-Navire Léger), a joint UK/France procurement scheduled to enter service by 2015;
• MdCN (Missile de Croisière Naval – naval cruise missile), both MLV and tube-launch, based on the French SCALP and U.K. Storm Shadow deep strike missile systems;
• VL MICA-M anti-air/multi-target/all-weather short- and medium-range missile system, employing active radar and IR seeker missiles for naval point and local area air defense by corvettes, frigates, and destroyers;
• TESEO Mk 2/OTOMAT radar-guided long-range missile system; and
• Vertical Launch (VL) Sea Wolf.

Consolidation of many of Europe’s leading defense contractors under EADS (European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company) in 2000 also brought together previous missile designs, ongoing R&D and existing customers. But reduced demand for high-end, innovative – and expensive – state-of-the-art systems, coupled with increasingly tight budgets worldwide, have kept the level of technological advance in EU-designed naval missiles low and slow, as generally has been the case worldwide.

A multinational conglomerate also faces other difficulties, as a Teal Group report notes with respect to plans to update the Sea Skua light antiship missile: “MBDA still can’t get its various national components to follow a single score, with Italy continuing to push upgraded versions of the Marte for this role. Since the market is relatively small, MBDA has good prospects for herding Britain and France together on the program and German participation is not outside the question, either. The Sea Skua will be competing against the Norwegian NSM [Naval Strike Missile], which is likely to have an established market position by the time Sea Skua 2 roles in. Given the slips in the program timeline and the inevitable delays incurred by a multinational program, an in-service date of 2015 seems unlikely.”

Israel

The most recent Israeli naval missile development, outside of possible black programs, is the Gabriel 5.

The Gabriel series of antiship sea-skimming missiles was developed by MBT, a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), in the early 1960s and upgraded in following decades to the Mk 2 and Mk 3, with exports to customers in Africa, South America, and East Asia. Plans for a long-range (124 nm) Mk 4 were scrapped in the mid-’90s when customers instead acquired the Harpoon.

About that same time, rumors of a Gabriel Mk 5 – possibly a collaborative venture with Singapore – began circulating, but it also apparently fell victim to competition, this time from the Exocet. In 2009, however, IAI began releasing limited data about a resurrected Mk 5, with computer-generated images strongly resembling the Harpoon. It reportedly uses an active radar I-band seeker, can use either a turbojet or solid rocket motor for propulsion and will have a range of about 36 nm.

Whether this latest effort to keep the Gabriel line alive and competitive with the current non-U.S. SOTA in naval missiles will have any more success than its predecessors for nearly a quarter of a century remains to be seen.

“The Gabriel I & II were rudimentary missiles compared to the competition, and have been acquired mainly by navies unable to acquire the more sophisticated missiles for cost or other reasons. The Harpoon and Exocet have demonstrated such advantages that even the new Israeli corvettes also carry the Harpoon missile,” according to Zaloga.

“The Gabriel 5 is likely to appear late in the decade. So far, there has been little information whether Gabriel 5 is ready for production or only entering the production stage.”

Israel’s Barak I point defense missile, broadly similar in role if not particulars to the U.S. RAM, is undergoing continued development. A longer-range version, with capabilities closer to the U.S. ESSM, is being developed through a partnership between Israeli Aerospace Industries, the Indian Defense Research and Development Organization, and the Indian navy.

The major improvement in Barak 8 or Barak II (to further confuse the issue, the Indian navy calls it LR-SAM) is range, extended up to 70 kilometers, although the missile is also planned to have a more advanced seeker. Like Barak I, it uses a simple eight-cell vertical launch system.

The Big Picture

While the U.S. state of the art in naval missiles maintains a significant technological lead over the rest of the world – an advantage unlikely to be significantly diminished in the foreseeable future – the Navy continues to push the envelope, despite projections of severe budget cuts for at least the remainder of this decade.

“We are always working to improve our weapons capabilities against the evolving threats. Some of our technology focus areas are performance improvement for lethality, energy management to extend battery life, alternative launching options, and process improvements for better target recognition,” Batzler said.

Dr. Roger McGinnis, Program Executive for Aviation Warfare and Weapons Innovative Naval Prototypes at the Office of Naval Research (ONR), added that also extends to what may lie beyond traditional missiles.

“ONR is working with industry to develop an electromagnetic railgun and the accompanying projectile,” he said. “When fully functional, this complementary weapon system is expected to provide a hypervelocity projectile at a much lower cost than most missile systems, though determining the exact production cost for the projectile is still a few years away.”

This article was first published in Defense: Spring 2012 Edition.