The UK has ordered a “significant number” of Lightweight Multirole Missiles (LMM) from Thales UK to equip “current and future” air defence systems for the British Army and Royal Navy’s rotary-wing maritime strike capabilities.
In a 24 July 2024, announcement, the UK’s Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) – the procurement arm of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) – revealed the £176m order ($227.3m) would support 135 jobs at Thales’ Belfast site in Northern Ireland.
A timeline for delivery of the weapons, and subsequent entry into UK service, was not disclosed.
Listed examples of the kind of systems that operate the LMM included the British Army’s Stormer air defence system, as well as the Royal Navy’s Martlet maritime anti-surface missile deployed from AW159 Wildcat helicopters.
The UK MoD states that “hundreds” of LMMs have also been gifted to Ukraine, which has also received an undisclosed number of Stormer air defence vehicles. The Stormer can be equipped with either the LMM or Starstreak High Velocity Missile (HVM) in its mobile air defence role.
Weighing 13kg, LMM is intended to provide an interception capability against threats such as drones, helicopters, other aircraft, and small, fast maritime targets.
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By GlobalDataMaria Eagle, Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, said that the UK must “continue to provide weapons to Ukraine” but also “replenish our own stocks”, in the DE&S announcement.
The order follows a £69m contract placed by DE&S earlier in 2024, also with Thales UK, to secure the supply chain for components used in the manufacture of the missiles. Production at the Thales Belfast site has doubled since the conflict in Ukraine began in February 2022.
UK weapons stocks have been severely depleted through continued donations of ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, which has come at some cost to a defence budget already struggling to cover earlier planned procurements.
Such is the drawdown in capability of the British Army in particular, that rare criticism has been levelled against the UK by the United States, which appears to be attempting to sideline London.
Indeed, the UK will begin to retire its Stormer air defence capability from 2026, with a replacement system as yet undetermined.
LMM as the FASGW-L system
Thales received a €56m ($75.8m) contract from the UK MoD in June 2014 to manufacture and integrate LMM as the Future Anti-Surface Guided Weapons Light (FASGW-L) system on to the Royal Navy’s Wildcat maritime attack helicopters.
The FASGW-L missile system consists of five-barrel launchers and a laser guidance system, acting as a very-short-range surface-to-air and surface-to-surface precision strike system.
The LMM missile’s propulsion system consists of a two-stage rocket motor. It has a velocity of more than Mach 1.5 and an operational range between 6km and 8km, while the minimum range is 400m.
