How will French MBDA's Remote Carrier Expendable drone change modern air warfare?

Announced in 2017, the Remote Carriers airborne combat drone program is one of the seven pillars of the Future Air Combat System, which brings together Germany, Spain, France and, more recently, Belgium as a 'observer.

It breaks down into two subroutines, one "heavy", entrusted to the German Airbus Defense & Space, which must produce a combat drone comparable in mass and mission to the Loyal Wingman developed across the Atlantic and in Australia, the other "light and consumable", entrusted to the French MBDA.

It is precisely the European missile that unveiled, on the occasion ofan interview given as part of the Paris Air Show 2023, a lot of information on the drone currently under development, as well as on the use that will be made of it and the considerable operational added value that it will bring to the FCAS program, but also, probably, au Rafale F5.

Currently called " Remote Carrier Expandable or RCE, which can be translated as Consumable Transport Drone, the device will have dimensions close to those of a cruise missile, with a length of 4 meters, but a much smaller mass of only 400 kg, allowing it not only to take place under the wings of a combat, but also a more constrained drone in terms of payload capacity, for example the Eurodrone RPAS, the Aarok, the heavy Remote Carrier, but also the drone derived from the Neuron, the development of which was announced at the occasion of the vote of the LPM 2024-2030 in France.

First surprise in the statements of Judde de Larivière, who heads the FCAS program at MBDA, the RCE can also be implemented by non-air vectors, such as land vehicles, ships and, something even more unexpected, submarines. , naturally opening the way to a very wide use of the system.

The device itself is designed to reproduce the performance and behavior of a fighter jet or a cruise missile, with high subsonic speed and significant maneuvering capabilities, which incidentally seems to be its primary function.

Indeed, according to MBDA, the RCE is above all designed to bring the anti-aircraft defenses of the adversary to reveal themselves by reproducing the behavior of a significant target, so that they can be engaged and destroyed by the aircraft. carrier, or by its capabilities deployed as part of the combat system.

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