On 21 May 2026 Lockheed Martin, MBDA and the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced that the MBDA Selective Precision Effects At Range (SPEAR) 3 precision-strike missile had finally made a first flight on board a Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II. SPEAR 3 is an advanced, network-centric weapon that will become the UK Lightning Force’s primary air-launched precision-effects surface-attack weapon. It soon emerged that this first flight had actually taken place four months earlier, on 20 January. 

The F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) and the UK MoD successfully completed the first test flight with four SPEAR 3 missiles on board an F-35B Lightning II test aircraft. The weapons were inert environmental data recording assets. The flight was conducted by the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, with Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Nick Baker of the Air and Space Warfare Centre at the controls.

The trials team included Lockheed Martin Aerospace, US Navy, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force maintainers and weapons technicians, who loaded the weapons, and MBDA engineers who oversaw test execution and data analysis.

This sortie was described as marking a major milestone for the integration of the SPEAR 3 missile and as reinforcing the F-35 JPO’s commitment to “advancing enterprise-wide capabilities for all partner nations”. Future testing will include the first mission systems integration and jettison trials.

The SPEAR programme was launched before the 2005 Defence Industrial Strategy, which concluded that then-current industry structure and commercial arrangements would be unable to support the development of future complex weapons and would require a new type of MoD/industry partnership that could set out a more predictable requirements roadmap. The new MBDA industrial consortium and a governmental Team Complex Weapons spearheaded the new approach to managing the design, development, manufacturing and through-life support of future weapons, with the SPEAR series of capability requirements laying at the heart of this.

The SPEAR Capability 1 requirement was filled by the Raytheon Paveway IV precision-guided bomb, while SPEAR Capability 2 was filled by the Brimstone 2 Block 3 and Brimstone 3. SPEAR Capability 4 was filled by upgrades to the Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile, while SPEAR Capability 5 anticipated a longer-range replacement for Storm Shadow.

SPEAR Capability 3 (SPEAR Cap 3) sought a longer-range 100 kg-class weapon that could be re-targeted in flight via two-way datalinks. Lockheed Martin offered its Surveilling Miniature Attack Cruise Missile (SMACM, pronounced ‘Smack ’em’) to meet the Capability 3 requirement, while Raytheon later offered the GBU-53 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) Increment II (now known as Stormbreaker), both of which failed to meet a number of key user requirements.

However, in the end a sovereign weapon was developed, based in part on the DSTL/QinetiQ/MBDA Sensor to Effect Phase 2 (S2E2) prototype, This was a networked mini-cruise missile based on Brimstone, with a multimode seeker (semi-active laser and RF/MMW), a datalink to enable mid-course guidance, a GPS module and a data fusion processor.

SPEAR Capability 3 passed its initial design review in 2011 and then cleared its assessment phase in 2018, after an extension. As the programme evolved, it became clear that it would be necessary for four to be carried internally in each of an F-35’s two weapons bays.

The F-35 programme required that any new-to-the-F-35 weapon was mature and had been demonstrated on another platform, so MBDA and BAE Systems integrated what was by then being called SPEAR 3, or SPEAR III, on the Eurofighter Typhoon. Although the compact size of the SPEAR 3 would allow three weapons to be carried per station on the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Spear missile is, for the time being, purely an F-35 weapon, with Typhoon serving purely as a test platform.

BAE Systems pilot Steve Formoso made a first unguided firing from Typhoon ZK355/BS116 in March 2016. The missile was dropped inverted (it is carried upside down because of the wing position), rolled erect, deployed its fold-out wings, started its turbojet engine and flew a series of manoeuvres to a predetermined impact point.

It was then still hoped that the weapon would be operational on the F-35B by 2021, but it was not until March 2019 that BAE Systems announced that Lockheed Martin had awarded the company a contract to integrate SPEAR 3, along with the MBDA Meteor beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM), onto the F-35B. Subsequent progress was slow, while the target in-service date slipped further and further away.

The UK MoD awarded MBDA a seven-year, GBP 550 million (EUR 637 million) demonstration and manufacturing contract for the SPEAR 3 missile system in early 2021, but fully guided firings from a Typhoon (in support of the F-35 integration) were delayed from the planned start within 18 months of the contract award (ie late 2022). A Typhoon test aircraft (ZK356, flown by Luke Gili Ross) was deployed to Sweden for the first guided firing over the Vidsel range on 17 October 2024 against a Russian-built T-72 tank and there were further firings in 2024 and 2025.

The UK MoD’s 2021 Equipment Plan, published on 21 February 2022, revealed that the in-service date of SPEAR 3 on the F-35B would be delayed from 2023 to 2025 but also stated that “entry into service on Lightning II in 2025 is likely to slip to 2026, on account of the overburdened [F-35] integration schedule”. The then-defence procurement minister, Jeremy Quin, had already informed the House of Commons Defence Committee (in November 2021) that full operating capability for the missile on the F-35B might not be achieved until 2028.

The F-35 programme blamed MBDA for not providing a weapon in time for scheduled ‘pit drop’ testing. This allegation is now understood to have been misleading, since the issue had been with the launcher for SPEAR Cap 3, not with the weapon itself. Moreover, the problem with the launcher was caused by Lockheed Martin’s inability to provide adequate data to MBDA, forcing the company to provide a launcher with multiple mode options to ‘cover all bases’. Because some of these optional modes turned out to be redundant, Lockheed Martin judged the launcher to be outside its specifications – specifications that it had failed to provide to MBDA!

Somewhat shockingly and disgracefully, a UK National Audit Office (NAO) report blamed delays to the UK’s SPEAR 3 programme on a combination of “poor supplier performance at MBDA”, resourcing shortages across the defence industry, a lack of qualified personnel and delayed component deliveries from the United States, as well as delayed F-35 Block 4 software upgrades from Lockheed Martin.

From a UK perspective, integration of what is now known simply as Spear (and of the Meteor BVRAAM) was a key element of the F-35 Block 4 upgrade. Technical problems saw Block 4 being ‘reimagined’ and there were fears that Spear integration could have dropped out of the re-scoped programme. Comments about ‘warfighter priorities’ were less than reassuring, since this almost certainly meant US warfighter priorities and provided no reassurance to those hoping to see Spear integrated rapidly onto the UK’s F-35Bs.

On 19 May 2025 UK Defence Readiness and Industry Minister Maria Eagle said that the “Spear Capability 3 air-to-surface weapon programme is currently undergoing re-baselining, with a review note expected towards the end of 2025. Until that is approved, dates are considered draft and of low confidence. The estimated current timeline for in-service capability is expected to be early 2030s.”

On 21 April 2026 UK Defence Procurement Minister Luke Pollard told parliament that an extended consultation phase had been finalised and that the long-delayed review note was close to being submitted for approval and that it would formally set out a new timeline for the SPEAR 3 missile programme. Until it is approved, the re-baselining conducted throughout 2025 cannot be formally locked in and the programme’s timelines remain in the same low-confidence state outlined by Eagles.

The NAO’s July 2025 report on the UK’s F-35 capability identified the lack of an effective standoff air-to-surface weapon and noted that funding for GBU-53 Small Diameter Bombs had been requested. Subsequently, a letter from MoD Permanent Secretary Jeremy Pocklington to the Public Accounts Committee, on 30 April 2026, confirmed that “approvals have been given to proceed with a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) procurement of the precision-guided munition Small Diameter Bomb (SDB-II)” as an interim precision stand-off capability pending the service introduction of SPEAR 3 in the early 2030s.

The GBU-53 is already integrated onto the F-35B and so a UK procurement will not require new integration work and can be undertaken quickly via the US FMS process. Some cynical observers suggest that the slow pace of Spear integration on F-35 has had the ‘desired effect’: a sale clocked up by US industry.

MBDA designed the SPEAR 3 with spiral development in mind and a number of variants have been drawn up. SPEAR Glide is an unpowered, lower-cost, higher-mass variant that is designed for high-rate production and accelerated entry into service – and that is a direct competitor to the GBU-53.

The SPEAR-EW is less likely to be affected by the UK Stormbreaker acquisition. A novel electronic warfare effector, SPEAR-EW is a stand-in jammer, designed to confuse enemy air defences, thereby protecting friendly forces and serving as a significant force multiplier.

The high degree of commonality within the SPEAR family will ensure minimal integration differences for each SPEAR variant.