MBDA Spear should be good for around 120nm. Spear-EW will get out to c250-300nm.
120nm? Any link for that? I know they said they'd overshot their initial aims considerably.
Bit of deduction. But I think it stacks up...UK MoD as ever is very cagey about range figures (you should see how many times they've changed the range of Storm Shadow on the RAF's own website..)
Both Spear and Stormbreaker are pretty much the same size and shape as each other. They're near identical. Thats partly driven by the F-35 weapons bay. There are precious few figures on Spear performance publically available...however the US, god bless them, is far more forthcoming with SDB2 Stormbreaker figures, so you can take some figures with a degree of safety from there. Even then the US might be underscoring some aspects...
SDB2 reaches out to a maximum (that the US has revealed, and bear in mind they might be underscoring it) of 70 miles using Glide only. So the question is...would the UK add huge cost to a missile (TJ-150 engine is >£40k alone), increase development time and risk and reduce the size of the warhead by 66%, from what it could be, for just another 20-30 miles range...I'd say categorically no...
So SDB2 is 93kg, with a warhead size of 48kg. Therefore the weight of the sensors, guidance, missile body and everything else is 45kg in total...
Spear dimensionally is near exactly the same. Weight has been listed as c100kg. If we take the SDB2 figure of 45kg for sensors, guidance and missile body etc. that leaves c55kg. Although they're different missiles they're not going to be that far removed. After all they have very similar capabilities in terms of guidance. We also know that the TJ-150 engine weighs 21kg. Which leaves 34kg to play with (55-21). All we know about Spear's warhead is that it is 'twice' the size of Brimstone's. Brimstone has a 6kg warhead so it seems reasonable and fair to say that Spear has a c14-15kg warhead (with a little allowance added in). That leaves us with c20kg for fuel for the TJ-150.
We also know the thrust and TSFC for the TJ-150...150lbs of thrust and a TSFC of c1.15. This means that to generate 150lbs of thrust for 12 minutes you would need around 35lbs (16kg) of fuel. Travelling at 600mph for 12 minutes will take you 120 miles.....(lets forget about the 4kg fuel left and leave that for piping, tankage, miscellaneous items etc.)
Range could actually be far in excess of 120 miles if they can keep it at altitude then harness the gliding potential at fuel exhaustion like SDB2 (remember the Spear gets lighter through its flight as it burns fuel as well...., whereas SDB2 remains the same mass all the way to target). But we don't know what state the SDB2 is in at the end of its range (i.e. is it a diving attack from a reasonable altitude, or is it coming in almost horizontally with practically zero energy left) or the power situation (electrical for guidance etc.) on both, so probably too risky just to add that on....
I think 120nm range is a reasonable lower estimate with some justification. But most of all because it simply wouldn't be worth doing in the first place if you didn't get a decent range increase out of it...
en.wikipedia.org
seapowermagazine.org
www.mbda-systems.com
www.defensenews.com
