The Defense Equipment & Support (DE&S) — an entity of the UK Ministry of Defense — awarded a contract to MBDA to carry out a demonstration of its the SPEAR-EW. The new electronic warfare system is a variant of the SPEAR weapon system family able to perform electronic jamming and deception. MBDA is developing the SPEAR-EW in partnership with Leonardo. Indeed, the Italian industrialist provides a miniaturized Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) technology.

Mike Mew, MBDA UK Director of Sales and Business Development, said: “Our vision for SPEAR is to create a swarm of networked weapons able to saturate and neutralise the most sophisticated air defenses.” Actually, the new SPEAR-EW will complement the SPEAR network enabled miniature cruise missile. He follows: “Adding SPEAR-EW to the family alongside our existing SPEAR strike missile demonstrates the principle of introducing complementary variants to the SPEAR family that will add significant capability and force multiplication without the need to repeat the platform integration.” Besides, the compact size of the SPEAR family allows four weapons to be carried internally in each of the two internal weapons bay of the F-35, or three per station on the Eurofighter Typhoon. SPEAR-EW will keep the same form and fit as the baseline SPEAR to enable a single integration pathway and launcher solution.

Mike Mew concludes: “We have an exciting roadmap of variants, spirals and technology insertions in the pipeline to further enhance the family as we move forward.”

The SPEAR weapons system also recently completed a set of ground trials and fit-checks of a loaded three-pack SPEAR launcher onto a Eurofighter Typhoon fighter aircraft. The work was undertaken by a joint engineering team from MBDA, BAE Systems, and the Ministry of Defense’s DE&S, and took place at BAE Systems’ flight test site in Warton, Lancashire.

The SPEAR weapon system family are currently on order for the Royal Air Force.