AIM-132 Advanced Short Range AAM

The AIM-132 Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile is an British infrared homing ("heat seeking") air-to-air missile, produced by MBDA. AIM-132 ASRAAM is currently in service in the Royal Air Force and Royal Australian Air Force, replacing the AIM-9 Sidewinder in those services. The project started as a British-German collaboration in the 1980s; eventually the Germans left the project due to concerns over the missile's performance. The British went ahead on their own, and the missile was introduced into RAF service in 1998. ASRAAM was developed to have longer range and higher speed than the Sidewinder at the expense of some maneuverability.

Characteristics

The main improvement, which was also made on the latest version of the AIM-9 Sidewinder, is a new focal plane array FPA (128x128 resolution imaging infrared) seeker developed by Hughes before they were acquired by Raytheon. This seeker has a long acquisition range, high countermeasures resistance, approximately 90 degrees off-boresight lock-on capability, and the possibility to designate specific parts of the targeted aircraft (like cockpit, engines, etc.). The ASRAAM also has a LOAL (Lock-On After Launch) ability which is a distinct advantage when the missile is carried in an internal bay such as in the upcoming F-35 Lightning II.

ASRAAM P3I

In 1995, Hughes and British Aerospace collaborated on the "P3I ASRAAM" - a version of ASRAAM as a candidate for the AIM-9X program. The P3I would have been very much like the AIM-132, but with the addition of thrust vectoring to provide increased agility and to carry a larger warhead to meet the requirements expressed by the US Navy led AIM-9X program. The ultimate winner was the Hughes submission using the same seeker but using the rocket motor, fuze and warhead of the AIM-9M. The latter was a US Air Force stipulation to ease the logistics burden and save by reusing as much as possible of the existing AIM-9 Sidewinder — of which 20,000 remained in the US inventory.

Potential future development

At the DSEi conference in September 2007 it was announced the UK MoD was funding a study by MBDA to investigate a replacement for the Rapier and Sea Wolf missiles. The Common Anti-Air Modular Missile (CAMM), would share components with ASRAAM.

MBDA has agreed to jointly develop a new generation air-to-air missile with India.

AIM-132 ASRAAM
Type	Short-range air-to-air missile
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Service history
In service	2002
Used by	UK, United Arab Emirates, Australia, India
Production history
Manufacturer	MBDA
Unit cost	> £200,000
Specifications
Weight	88 kg
Length	2.90 m
Diameter	166 mm
Warhead	10 kg blast/fragmentation
Detonation mechanism	laser proximity fuze and impact
Engine	solid rocket motor
Wingspan	450 mm
Operational range	300 m – 18 km
Flight altitude	N/A
Speed	Mach 3+
Guidance system	Imaging infra-red, 128×128 element focal plane array, with lock-on after launch (LOAL) and strapdown inertial
Launch platform	Aircraft: Royal Air Force: Tornado, Typhoon Royal Australian Air Force: F/A-18