The Swedish Air Force announced that MBDA’s Meteor Beyond Visual Range Air to Air Missile (BVRAAM) has officially entered service on its Gripen combat aircraft during a ceremony on July 11, the company said.
Maj. Gen. Mats Helgesson, Chief-of-Staff of the Swedish Air Force, announced this with Saab AB’s CEO Håkan Buskhe (producer of the Gripen) and MBDA’s CEO Antoine Bouvier at the Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom.
“After extensive testing by FMV and the Gripen Operational Test and Evaluation unit, all of the new MS20 functions including the Meteor missile are now fully integrated with Gripen. The Swedish Air Force is now in its Initial Operational Capability phase with the Meteor,” Helgesson said at the ceremony.
“I am very proud and satisfied to have the Meteor in the inventory of my air force,” he added.
Bouvier highlighted the multinational cooperation involved in Meteor.
“Meteor is a missile that no nation could have developed or produced alone. Sweden and the five other Partner Nations in the program – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. – can be both proud and confident that they have a missile that ensures unquestionable air superiority for their pilots in the defense of their respective countries’ sovereign interests,” Bouvier said at the event.
Sweden’s Defense Material Administration (FMV) previously introduced the latest MS20 software load to the Air Force’s Gripen fleet in April. This update allowed the JAS 39 Gripen C/D to become the fist aircraft capable of operating the Meteor missile, MBDA said.