Missile Moyenne Portée

Missile Moyenne Portée is a French man-portable anti-tank guided missile. It is developed by MBDA Missile Systems and is intended as a replacement for their MILAN, which has been sold worldwide.

Origins
The MMP programme originated in 2009 to develop a successor to MBDA's forty-year old MILAN. This was particularly in response to a French Urgent Operational Requirement of 2010 which had led to the purchase of the US-made Javelin, rather than MILAN. The UK, a major user of MILAN, had previously also converted from MILAN to Javelin.

The development programme has been funded privately by MBDA, and is scheduled to be completed by 2017.

In December 2013, an order was placed by the French DGA to equip the French Army as of 2017.

Testing began in 2014, with warhead tests against MBT armour and then in April launches in a test tunnel to confirm missile safety for its launch crew. MMP was displayed at Eurosatory 2014.

Description
MMP is described as a fifth-generation missile. It was particularly designed to overcome some of MILAN's limitations in the context of small-scale and counter-insurgency operations post-2000, rather than the Cold War tank war of the original MILAN requirement. In theatres such as Iraq and Afghanistan, man-portable missile were often used against strongpoints and improvised armour within populated areas. Reducing collateral damage to nearby civilians became a major political factor in such campaigns.

Particular developments over existing missiles were for it to be safe for operators within a confined space, i.e. reduced backblast on launch, and for improved guidance that could target non-IR cold targets as well as AFVs with a reduced risk of collateral damage. Compared to its predecessors it contains a great deal of modern electronics, rather than the previously slow-moving development of military procurement.

Despite these new features, it was still to remain effective against modern AFV and MBT armour. A tandem warhead is used, making it effective against conventional, composite and reactive armour.

MBDA list the main features of the missile as:
 * Lightweight, easily man-portable. The first missiles supplied will be man-portable and fired from a light tripod, but vehicle mounts are in development.
 * Day or night, all-weather reconnaissance and identification capability
 * Safe firing from confined spaces, with reduced blast both behind and forward of the launcher. The missile may be launched with infantry in close proximity ahead.
 * Rapid reaction operation, and firing sequence reversibility. Unlike some missiles, such as Stinger, with gas-cooled IR sensors or one-shot thermal batteries, MMP may be locked-on to potential targets repeatedly without consuming resources.
 * Lethality against a wide target set: hot and cold targets, including latest MBTs
 * Minimising risk of collateral damage.

The missile and its guidance system offers three different operating modes, according to tactical need as the time:
 * Fire-and-Forget
 * Man In The Loop with fibre optic data link
 * Lock On After Launch (LOAL) for non line-of-sight (NLOS) and using third party target designation.

The missile carries a dual-band seeker in both IR and visible low-light video. The IR seeker is not cooled, which would restrict some performance for an anti-aircraft missile but is a major simplification for an infantry missile. In particular it avoids relying on a pressurised gas supply which would need to be replenished. A data link from the missile presents the seeker images back to the firing station for Man In The Loop control. This also allows a launch to be aborted without detonation, should a collateral civilian suddenly obscure the target.

Range: 4,000 m

Operators

 * 🇫🇷 – French Army: 400 launchers and 2,850 missiles to enter service from 2017.