MBDA is heading into production with its Spear air-launched surface attack weapon, which in Royal Air Force (RAF) parlance equates to its Select Precision Effects At Range Capability 3 (SPEAR Cap 3) programme.

Jon McCullagh, MBDA’s sales and business development executive for Spear UK, told gathered journalists at the 2026 Farnborough International Airshow on 21 July, “This year we’re entering production with it for customer deliveries next year. We’re coming to the end of a development phase. We’ve done rigorous laboratory testing and live firings to prove the effectiveness of the weapon and show that it’s mature and ready for operation.”

While declining to give a specific figure, McCullagh noted that the UK Ministry of Defence has ordered “a firm number” of missiles and that MBDA is moving into low-rate production with the weapon this year before moving into full-rate production in 2027.

Described by McCullagh as a “mini cruise missile”, Spear is a turbofan-powered missile in the 100 kg class with a range in excess of 100 km. A network-enabled weapon that uses a datalink to receive updates on its way to the target, Spear is an all-weather weapon that can use both a millimetric wave active radar seeker and a semi-active laser (SAL) seeker to acquire its target.

While Spear has been test-launched multiple times from a Eurofighter Typhoon, it is actually destined for internal carriage by the UK’s fleet of F-35B Joint Strike Fighters using a four-pack launcher that has already been fully developed.

Asked why the weapon is not being integrated onto the Typhoon thus far, McCullagh replied, “What we’ve started investing in now is a three-pack launcher, which we are going to certify for operational use. Our intention is to use that in the remaining future guided firings off Typhoon to produce the evidence to show that we have an operational launcher that can be used on Typhoon. It’s really up to the customers out there, and we are speaking to a number of Typhoon users who are interested in it.”

However, McCullagh did additionally note that a number of potential European customers had done fit checks with Spear on “fourth-generation aircraft”, although he declined to provide further specifics.

Spear variants

Meanwhile, MBDA is developing two additional versions of the weapon: the unpowered Spear Glide, which is a lower-cost weapon intended for high-rate production to increase combat mass; and Spear EW, which is an electronic warfare (EW) effector designed to confuse and suppress enemy air defences. Both weapons have the same form factor and use the same launchers as the original Spear and would thus be easily and rapidly integrated on any platform already cleared to use Spear.

McCullagh said in relation to the former, “Recent conflicts have shown there’s a need for a lower-cost utility weapon, so with Spear Glide we’ve pretty much done a full redesign of the internals to use COTS [commercial off the shelf] equipment and make it much easier and cheaper to manufacture. … It doesn’t have the same millimetric seeker in it, [but will] still have an all-weather capability with the SAL, with image-based navigation, and with GNSS, but you have a larger warhead, and it’s more of a utility weapon. So we’ve got a lot of interest in that.”

McCullagh noted that Spear Glide’s price point “is absolutely comparable with other glide weapons on the market”.

With regard to Spear EW, McCullagh said, “We’ve got a fairly mature design. … Obviously, learning from the [recent] conflicts shows that you do need a deception and decoy capability, not only to protect platforms but to protect waves of missiles going into targets, and putting it in the same form factor of Spear means you can carry Spear EW as well as other Spears without really affecting your operational warload. So there is a lot of interest in it. We’re basically waiting to get to a launch customer position.”