RAF tests X-Ray Helmets

[Chock]

This of course doesn't take into account missile offerings from other nations, which negates the military budget spending argument being indicative of quality, since the cost is spread throughout many countries and many companies. The success of this approach to development can be seen in aircraft such as the Eurofighter Typhoon and the huge Airbus range, to name but two such ventures.

Many of the joint-developed missiles will see more sales simply because they do not come with 'strings attached' as most US, and to a large extent, Russian ones do. Which is also why Chinese ones are selling like hot cakes, because they don't give a toss who they sell to, sort of like the French in that respect. And this is an important factor; the British came very close to pulling out of the Joint Strike Fighter project because of these political strings when the Bush administration were refusing to allow sharing of some of the JSF technology in what was some extremely one-way traffic isolationism, this caused an impasse because the RAF insisted on being able to service their own aircraft domestically if need be. So much for the 'special relationship' eh?

There are many more missiles than the Russian and US offerings: You have the German-led IRIS-T thrust vectoring short range missile, the long range European MDBA Meteor, which has better radar jamming capabilities than either the Russian or US offerings, the DRDO Astra (still an unknown quantity but looks similar to a stretched Matra 530 to me, probably with Russian internals). DRDO are apparently considering reviving the Novator KS-172 ultra long range mach 4 anti-satellite missile too. Brazil has the Mectron MAA-1 Piranha. China has the short range PL-9, Britain the AIM-132 LOAL ASRAAM (itself developed to try and catch up with the Vympel R-73's (AA-11 Archer) capabilities, as indeed was the AIM-9X, which is ironic, since the R-73 is ancient by current Russian armament performance standards). And that's just a small selection that I can think of offhand.

It's not a two-horse race by any means.

Chock