Farnborough 2024: MBDA advances AI-based Orchestrike for SPEAR missile family

The concept of the MBDA Orchestrike for network-enabled weapons. (Janes/Gareth Jennings)

European missile house MBDA has revealed that its Selective Precision Effects At Range (SPEAR) precision-strike missile will be the first weapons family enabled with its Orchestrike artificial intelligence (AI) tool for collaborative strike weapons.

First unveiled at the Paris Air Show in June 2023, Orchestrike provides in-flight weapons with the ability to share information between themselves in order to increase survivability, tempo, and lethality. According to Greg Nunn, MBDA UK's tactical strike mission lead, the last 12 months have seen the company mature the concept through simulation, modelling, and experimentation in a Digital Battlespace Facility (DBF) at its Stevenage site just north of London.

“By sharing information across the salvo of weapons, and also back to the platform, Orchestrike enhances the overall deliver, survivability, and effect that you can [achieve],” he told a pre-Farnborough International Airshow 2024 media briefing at the DBF on 15 July. “It covers missile-to-missile communications, missile-to-platform [communications], and also third-party communications. It's not just the weapons talking to themselves – it's how the whole network [data] is shared amongst the various nodes in the specific strike scenario.”

Over the past year, MBDA has sought to move Orchestrike from a concept towards a realisable capability. This acceleration has been focused on refining AI algorithms, advancing missile-to-missile datalinks, and performing integration with the SPEAR weapon system.

While the weapon-to-platform component of Orchestrike will enable collaborative and co-ordinated effects, it is the new missile-to-missile communication link that will realise a co-operative capability. A number of tactics are supported according to Nunn, notably dynamic target reallocation, synchronised time on target, and re-routing around enemy air defences. “In culmination, those three tactics can give you a significant force multiplier,” he said.