Article Posted on : - Nov 22, 2010

The MICA missile will arm France's Rafale fighter. An MBDA photo

PARIS (BNS): The French Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) has last month received the 1,000th MICA air-to-air missile system from European missile manufacturer MBDA.

The multi-mission missile system, which will arm French Air Force’s advanced Rafale fighter aircraft, was delivered on October 25, the DGA said.

The DGA has ordered a total of 1,110 MICA missiles from MBDA. The French forces will have this entire fleet of MICA by 2012, the DGA said.

The all-weather short and medium-range MICA missiles operate on ‘fire-and-forget’ principle. The missiles have been designed for the army, navy as well as air force.

The MICA system has been produced in two variants – RF MICA with an active radio frequency seeker and IR MICA with a passive imaging infrared seeker.

The 1,000th missile accepted by the DGA is the MICA IR variant for the French Air Force.

Besides Rafale, the missile can also be installed on the latest versions of the Mirage 2000-5 combat aircraft of France. MICA is also under integration on Mirage F1 bringing a modern air-to-air BVR capability to this type of aircraft.

MBDA has produced and sold the missiles to a number of other countries in its air-or surface-to-air version of VL-MICA (Vertical Launch MICA) configuration.