2010–present
By 2010, the company had begun work on the Fire Shadow loitering munition for the British Army.[14] The company's Brimstone missile also received increased publicity following the launch of Operation Ellamy in Libya and Operation Shader in Iraq and Syria, with politicians and analysts highlighting the missile's low risk of collateral damage.[15] This resulted in increased interest in the missile on the export market, in particular by the United States and France.[16] The company further developed Brimstone into a range of variants, including a sea-launched Brimstone Sea Spear, Brimstone 3 and an entirely new missile, currently named SPEAR 3, which uses technology derived from Brimstone.[17]
The Lancaster House Treaties signed in 2010 by the British and French governments resulted in the company collaborating with MBDA France on several missile projects, including the Future Anti-Surface Guided Weapon (Heavy) (FASGW(H)) anti-ship missile, later named Sea Venom, and a new hypersonic cruise missile, later named Perseus.[18]
In 2017, the company began leading a consortium to develop a laser directed-energy weapon technology demonstrator, named Dragonfire, for the UK MOD.[19]
In 2018, MBDA UK opened a new facility in Bolton to carry out final assembly work for Meteor for all six European partner nations.[20] By 2018, the missile had achieved marked export success, with export sales to India, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Brazil and Egypt, among other countries. Since 2014, MBDA UK also collaborated with Japan to produce a Japanese Meteor-derived missile, known as JNAAM.[21] During the same year, the company joined other leading British defence companies in Team Tempest, a consortium led by BAE Systems to develop the BAE Systems Tempest fighter aircraft. The company's responsibilities are to provide advanced weapon systems, including the integration of SPEAR 3 and Meteor missiles, electronic warfare capabilities and an anti-ship cruise missile which is still in development.[22]
The company's sales to Saudi Arabia, particularly of Brimstone and Storm Shadow ground-attack missiles, received increased scrutiny following the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and Saudi Arabia's alleged war crimes. The potential complicity of MBDA UK in these crimes became the subject of a 300-page report submitted to the International Criminal Court by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights in 2019.[23]
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, MBDA UK supported the British government's efforts to supply Ukraine with military aid. The company's weapons donated to Ukraine include the Brimstone air-to-ground missile and the Storm Shadow cruise missile.[24] The latter was described as a "game changer" by analysts as Ukraine had a deficiency in long-ranged weapons.[25][26] The missiles had to be modified for integration on Ukraine's Soviet-sourced Su-24 strike aircraft.[27] This process took a matter of weeks, rather than years under normal circumstances.[28] The missiles have been used extensively during the war, including in attacks against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Working with the UK MOD, MBDA UK also rapidly developed a surface-launched variant of its ASRAAM air-to-air missile to be used for air defence. It has a reported successful hit rate of 90%.[29]
