Thales UK Unveils New Lightweight Multirole Missile

Thales UK revealed its new Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) on 2 June, drawing heavily on the earlier Starburst and Starstreak surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to develop a low-cost weapon system aiming to engage a wide range of air, land and sea targets.

The new laser beam-riding missile would be able to defeat a "sensible target set" including rigid inflatable boats (RIBs), jet skis and small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as most targets regularly encountered on modern battlefields, from bunkers and light vehicles up to and including tracked armoured personnel carriers, with a relatively light, flexible warhead.

In essence, the new missile is built within the same basic airframe footprint as Starburst, so it can fit in the same canister as a Starburst/Starstreak missile, and features four flip-out, movable forward fins and four more fixed fins at the back. Unlike the helical-flightpath, fixed-fin concept taken with Starstreak, the point-accuracy that Thales was seeking with the LMM requires the missile to fly a much more traditional path down the centre of the laser beam, steered by the fully controlled forward fins. The control actuation for this uses low-cost off-the-shelf components, brushes and DC motors.