sensors and weapons, that will come online later than 2025. He also points out that there is a twelve year window during which acquisitions can be made as part of the HX-specific funding, and that all offers will include parts of the package, e.g. The first point is, as he said in his earlier post which was published when the notifications came out, that they are confident that they will be able to build five offers that fills all the requirements within the current budget, and that these packages obviously will include air-to-air missiles. However, there are a few issues that warrants clear comments to avoid confusion. In his post, Puranen starts with rehashing the same things that he has commented on a few times earlier as well, namely that the offers are far from ready, that they can’t comment on details of any particular offer, and that speculation on what is included in the DSCA notifications and what isn’t isn’t helpful for the competition. A Finnish F/A-18C Hornet sporting wingtip AIM-9X Sidewinder and underfuselage AIM-120C AMRAAM refuelling from a RAF Mildenhall-based KC-135R Stratotanker. Turns out the issue caused enough of ripples to warrant a blog post by programme director Lauri Puranen. In any case, there will be medium-ranged air-to-air missiles operational on any aircraft that ends up winning HX, and the options on the table for the American ones include either a separate notification and order before IOC (order in 2025 and delivery 2026/2027 would probably be the approximate timeline) or the continued use of the current AMRAAM stocks.Īnd I wasn’t the only one thinking about the lack of serious air-to-air firepower. For an Air Force that swears by the supreme importance of the air-to-air mission above anything else, it was a surprising detail, and one which I in my post on the release commented as follows: The recent DSCA notifications for the Finnish HX programme included one particular oddity, in that they did not sport any longer-ranged air-to-air weapons than the AIM-9X.

Aim 120 amraam