Article Posted on : - Jan 04, 2011

The Meteor air-air missile. Photo: Dassault / MBDA / I3M.

PARIS (BNS): France has ordered 200 air-to-air Meteor missiles to equip its Rafale fighters serving in the air force and navy, the defense ministry said on Monday in a statement.

The Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA), the French government's arms procurement agency, asked its British counterpart, Defence Equipment and Support, to place the order with MBDA UK, the prime contractor for cooperative European missile programme.

The value of the contract was not disclosed.

The Meteor missile, to be designed with a ramjet, can “intercept targets at ranges of several tens of kilometers," the statement said.

The first missiles will be delivered in 2018 and will equip the Rafale aircraft, which are manufactured by France's Dassault Aviation.

The Dassault Rafale is a French twin-engined delta-wing agile multi-role 4.5th-generation fighter aircraft.