MBDA,
The Aspide 2000 missile has set yet another exceptional record in its long career. During an air defence exercise that took place at the end of January 2009, the Amoun battery of Kuwait’s Air Defence Brigade carried out five Aspide 2000 missile launches against a series of air targets simulating different types of attack scenarios.
All of the launches were successful and all five targets were destroyed, either by direct impact or as a result of the warhead exploding within a miss distance of well below one meter. The launches were performed in different weather conditions (day and night) and showed once again the absolute reliability of MBDA’s Aspide 2000 missile.
As a result of this exercise, the Aspide 2000 was able to establish an absolute record in terms of percentage launch success, establishing a success rate exceeding 97% from over 600 missiles launched around the world. With over 5,000 missiles having already been produced, Aspide is now experiencing a new dawn in its latest “2000” version.
Ing. Fabrizio Giulianini, MBDA’s Executive Group Sales and Business Development Director and MBDA Italy Managing Director, said “This latest achievement of the Aspide 2000 missile has confirmed its operating effectiveness and its design strength which has allowed us to renovate the system without any issues of note. Furthermore, this success also confirms that good system and technological choices were made from the very beginning.
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“This exceptional result will give further impetus to the export activities involving this missile, which, as well as being deployed on the Skyguard/Amoun system, is also used on many other systems such as Skyguard El, the naval Albatros variant and the Spada AMI. Aspide 2000, the latest version of the Aspide missile, as well as being deployed in the Skyguard Amoun, is also used in the Spada 2000 Plus system”.
The Spada 2000 Plus system is a ground based air defence missile system designed to protect vital assets from different types of threat such as fighter and bomber aircraft, cruise missiles, helicopters and UAVs.
The Spada 2000 Plus is characterized by a high degree of modularity and flexibility, based on ISO standard modules.
Each system section comprises a Detection Center and up to four Firing Sections, each one comprising a Fire Control Center and two Missile Launchers each equipped with six missiles.
The Spada 2000 Plus system is also capable of integrating V-SHORAD weapon systems and can operate autonomously or can be integrated within a higher level defence network or architecture.
With industrial facilities in four European countries and within the USA, MBDA has an annual turnover of more than EUR 3 billion and an order book of more than EUR 13 billion. With more than 90 armed forces customers in the world, MBDA is a world leader in missiles and missile systems.
MBDA is the only group capable of designing and producing missiles and missile systems that correspond to the full range of current and future operational needs of the three armed forces (land, sea and air). MBDA is jointly owned by BAE Systems (37.5%), EADS (37.5%) and Finmeccanica (25%).
