Why Will World Need New Air-to-Air Missiles?

Larry Dickerson, the missile anaylyst who wrote the article on which yesterday's missile forecast article was predicated, talked with ANN, to explain his reasoning.

We were interested to learn why the market for air-to-air missiles would grow so much, over the next few years. Did he know something about the coming war with Iraq, or possible extended, or separate conflicts? Will more and more nations get air power, and more nations thus get missiles for defense? Will existing users simply be practicing more -- and will there thus be a market for target aircraft, as well?

No, no, and no. Mr Dickerson said that, though the markets will grow, it's not really due to any of the above. "Though aircraft wil play a large role in whatever may happen over Iraq," he said, "it's unlikely there will be a lot of air-to-air missile use in that conflict." He remembered what happened the last time -- Saddam had his pilots fly to Iran (something they were all too willing to do), to get the planes out of harm's way. "Unless there is a general, conventional war," he explained, "there shouldn't be a lot of use of air-to-air [missiles]."

The market comes from other factors: "You could see a replacement market, in a standard procurement cycle," Dickerson said. As existing assets get older, their maintenance costs rise, to the point where it becomes cheaper to go with the newer weapons." He made the case of Spain's experiment, where the air force experimented with AMRAAMs, but found that the aircraft radars weren't adequate to use them. Going back to the Sparrow (top), a match for the aircraft systems, was only a partial solution. "The Sparrows are old, and they are costing more to maintain ready; and their reliability is declining." A wholesale upgrade -- aircraft, systems, and missiles -- is due.

The market is demanding better, and more-expensive, missiles, too. That's part of the rising investment. Of the modern crop of air-to-air missiles, "the AMRAAM's been out the longest; export sales have been steadily climbing; but the next-generation missile, the AIM-9X, and the ASRAAM (AIM-132, right), are just starting to come in -- you're seeing a re-equipment cycle starting." Newer, better, more deadly -- that's what is in demand. Older missiles may represent too large a risk, over their short-term cost savings.

Of course, the European consortium is facing its own problems, some of which are endemic to such an arrangement. "The Meteor [air-to-air missile, being developed by MBDA, the cooperative effort among EADS, Matra, BAe, and Finmeccanica] may come in, as well, if they can get their funding."

That funding is a problem. Even a system as small (in military terms) as an air-to-air missile represents an enormous pile of money. Either the superpower has a monopoly, or other nations must develop their own. "There just isn't enough money for any one country, so the coalitions have to do the work," Larry said. "[German Chancellor Gerhard] Schroeder is in a bad situation -- he made a big deal about jobs during his re-eection campaign, and his party lost strength; and the Greens gained strength. The German defense budget is supposed to get huge cuts now -- and they just don't have that many Euros to cut, from the defense budget. The German Navy is demanding new ships -- the money is getting spread thinner and thinner."

ANN has made much of the German involvement in the Airbus A400M -- making a giant order, landing the lion's share of the factories and infrastructure, and then backing off the order. Germany's growing social-state, anti-military factions are putting the squeeze on all sorts of military programs. That's bad news for the coalitions, and for their future funding.

Whether the Meteor, or other euro-cooperative programs come to fill the predicted demand, though, is not the question. The question is whether the air-to-air market will expand so greatly, and so rapidly -- and the answer (regardless who fills the demand) is, 'yes.'

FMI: www.forecast1.com, www.raytheon.com, www.eads.net