France is an important military power in Europe and the world. The French have always been very skilled in military weapons and equipment. The pursuit of independence was the mainstream advocated by General de Gaulle after World War II. However, France has recently made a comparison in the development of new weapons. The embarrassing joke, Tiger gunship, the French actually used American missiles, which is really unacceptable.
On November 13, 2020, French Defense Minister Florence Pally announced that it will provide equipment for the French Army’s Tiger gunships to develop the next generation of airborne aircraft in accordance with the future tactical air-to-surface missile (MAST-F) program Missiles, according to the plan, the total contract price is up to 700 million euros, equivalent to 5.45 billion yuan, including 500 missile development and mass production costs. The most interesting thing is that these new missiles will be used to replace the French Tiger helicopters. The American AGM-114K-1A/N-1 Hellfire II missile used on it! This can't help but make people sigh, don't the French even know how to do anti-tank missiles?
France has developed a new type of missile to replace the American missile
. There is also a lot of funny background. Tiger helicopters are used in many countries, including Germany, France, Australia, and Spain, but the helicopter’s weapons have never been unified. Spain currently uses Israeli Rafael Spike-LR missiles, Germany uses MBDA HOT-3 missiles and the PARS 3 LR missiles in the European TRIGAT program, while Australia and France use American Hellfire missiles, and the Tiger helicopter original missiles belong to the European MBDA group. The long-range Triggett missile in the TRIGAT program. The main parameters of this new type of missile of
are that the maximum range of the missile exceeds 8 kilometers, and the Tiger helicopter can carry 8 at the same time. The guidance system of the missile adopts a dual-channel design, including optical and thermal imaging systems, and an optical seeker during the day. Thermal imaging is used at night, and the missile eliminates the common wires of HOT missiles, and adopts a human-in-the-loop design. The missile is equipped with a two-way data link. The warhead is multi-purpose and can be used for tanks or anti-fortifications.
French fighters use French missiles. This is a tradition of the French for decades. It has been destroyed in recent years. As far as missile technology is concerned, the French began to develop supporting anti-tank missiles when they developed the Tiger helicopter. It is the well-known long-range Trigger missile. This type of missile has a maximum range of 5 kilometers and uses infrared imaging guidance. The missile has a flight speed of 300 seconds. Compared with laser-guided missiles, it has a high degree of concealment and is not easy to be detected in advance.
France has successfully developed the Triguet missile itself. Why use American products? The reason is estimated to be the price problem. In most weapons fields, the unit price of American weapons is relatively cheap due to the large demand and large quantities, while the performance of French products is also relatively good. Advanced, because there are few orders and the price is very expensive, it can't compete with American products in most areas. In recent years, the Americans have launched embargo sanctions at every turn, making Europeans no longer dare to believe the Americans, and the weapon system is completely non-U.S. In order to escape the risk of sanctions, the most typical case is the Storm Shadow cruise missile carried by the French Rafale.
Europe has formed a missile development group to contend with the United States. It is still unknown whether
is a missile technology that is slightly behind in the world. The main reason is that the world’s latest anti-tank missiles often have a maximum range of more than 10 kilometers, and The most critical point is that multi-mode guidance must be used, such as millimeter wave and infrared laser composite guidance technology. This technology is currently mastered by China and the United States. After
successfully developed the millimeter-wave version of the Hellfire AGM-114K missile in the United States, China also demonstrated its own millimeter-wave long-range anti-tank missile 21 in 2020. The missile uses a millimeter-wave active seeker with post-launch Regardless of ability, it can launch attacks on multiple targets, with a maximum range of more than 10 kilometers. In the future, newer multi-mode guided anti-tank missiles will also come out. In this field, Europeans have begun to seriously fall behind!
