In response to a question from Doug Barrie of the Institute for Strategic Studies, regarding the capability of contractors to replenish depleting inventories in a timely fashion, MBDA remarked that:
“MBDA has demonstrated our Brimstone industrial surge capability to support previous operational needs [in Libya] and, due to the Portfolio Management Agreement, we are proactively able to flex to meet our customer’s changing needs.”
At present, MBDA is already producing additional dual-mode Brimstone missiles for the UK Royal Air Force.
“MBDA is currently supplying dual-mode Brimstone missiles, as we periodically do, to ensure our customer’s operational advantage with this unique weapon is sustained. It is not appropriate to elaborate on any details of quantities or timescales,”
MBDA has secured several top-up orders for dual-mode Brimstone since it was purchased as an urgent operational requirement to meet RAF needs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the article notes, while not all orders have been announced, thanks to the Brimstone’s superior engineering and modular construction MBDA is able to convert single-mode Brimstones to Dual-Mode Brimstones in short order, which allows MBDA to continue to be to meet operational requirements without sacrificing the timeline or budget for ongoing production of the new Brimstone 2.
“The MoD spokeswoman said there were no talks underway with the US at the moment for a further buy of Lockheed Martin’s Hellfire missile. Barrie reckons the MoD “might be loath to buy too many more Hellfires because they will soon have the option to switch to Brimstone 2.”
As the article notes, MBDA is studying the use of Brimstone 2 for helicopters as a follow up to the successful MQ-9 Reaper tests completed in 2014.
Read the entire article by Andrew Chutler on Defense News here.
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