European missile house MBDA exhibited a mock-up of its Wolfram Surface-Launched Brimstone (SLB) concept at the 2024 Defence Vehicle Dynamics (DVD2024) show, held at UTAC Millbrook in Bedfordshire in 18 and 19 September.
Although the concept, which was mounted on a Supacat Coyote 6×6 platform at the show, has been previously shown, at DVD2024 MBDA complemented the mock-up with a demonstration version of how its command-and-control system would work.
Paul Minckley, business development executive at MBDA, outlined to ESD on 19 September the particular British Army requirements that SLB is addressing.
“There’s two requirements currently in line. The first is BGOAA: Battle Group Organic Anti-Armour. Under that is something called Mounted Close Combat Over-watch (MCCO) and that’s Brimstone on Boxer [the British Army’s new Mechanised Infantry Vehicle]. That’s in the [British Army] portfolio as a funding line, but that’s only in the 2030 timescale, so not now basically.
“What Wolfram stands for is addressing an LFO requirement, which is Light Forces Overwatch, which is trying to give an anti-armour capability at the lowest level of the battlefield, which is the sort of battlegroup/brigade level. This is a non-line of sight, lethal system that can be operated at the lowest levels
Asked about the timeline for Wolfram, Minckley replied, “at the moment we’re engaging with DE&S [the UK Ministry of Defence’s Defence Equipment and Support organisation] to pull the programme together. The army has just gone through scrutiny and said it is something that they want, and it’s something that we’re looking to mobilise teams around to start developing. We’ve got a couple of programmes and contracts in the pipeline, unfortunately, that are currently paused due to the change of government, but we’re hoping they’ll be released in the next couple of weeks and that’ll be the first [step] to kicking this off.”
Although it is widely acknowledged that a surface-launched Brimstone capability has already been delivered to the Ukrainian armed forces, Brimstone – originally an air-launched weapon – will need to be fully qualified as a land asset for use by the British Army.
“We need to make sure that it is able to travel the distances, fight at pace and tempo, and to make sure that the missile can survive the rigours that the British Army will put it through,” said Minckley. “It’s making sure we can underpin the promises that we make about the system, and we have confidence. We’ve already done some initial testing, and we’re very, very confident.
“The main concern we have at the moment, and something we’re inviting the army in to work with us on,” Minckley added, “is understanding their sustainment strategy, so how do they want to reload it? How many do they want to be firing? How quickly and how long do they want to be firing them? Because that inherently drives the design. Do they want the whole cassette to be dropped off and you pick another one up, like M270 [the British Army’s Multiple Launch Rocket Systems – MLRS], or do you want to do single missile reloads and have the flexibility in just firing one or two at a time? That’s the sort of thing we’re in the space of trying to understand at the moment.”
Brimstone is billed by MBDA as the most lethal anti-armour weapon in its class, owing to the missile’s large warhead, top-attack profile and fire control/seeker technology that means it only starts actively searching for its target moments before prosecuting an attack, leaving the target with little very time to react.
At DVD2024 MBDA also displayed a model of its Land Precision Strike (LPS) missile: a potential future alternative missile for the British Army’s M270 MLRS systems. The purpose of the LPS missile would be to effectively engage moving, relocatable, fleeting high-value and high-payoff point targets with low collateral effects in the 150 km range.
As Bill Beaumont, MBDA’s business development lead for LPS, explained to ESD on 19 September, the weapon takes a lot of the technology from MBDA’s air-launched Selective Precision Effects At Range (SPEAR) missile, in particular its seeker technology, and applies it to the British Army’s requirement to address fleeting targets that GPS-targeted weapons could not address. The weapon’s components would therefore already be at a high technology readiness level.
Beaumont noted that MBDA has just finished the concept stage for LPS under contract to DE&S and is currently awaiting approval to move into an assessment and development phase with the weapon.
