The Thales Group announced that on February 10, 2025, at the Aeroindia 2025 aerospace exhibition in Bangalore, India, it signed a joint contract with the Indian state-owned Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) to supply the first batch of Laser Beam Riding Man Portable Air Defense (LBRM) man-portable air defense systems to the Indian ground forces this year. The LBRM complex is an Indian localized version of the famous Starstreak HVM portable air defense system with a laser beam guidance system produced by Thales.
The Laser Beam Riding Man Portable Air Defense (LBRM) portable anti-aircraft missile system purchased by India, which is a variant of the Thales Starstreak HVM (c) Thales complex
The contract is a follow-up to the partnership agreement signed in 2021 between Thales and BDL on the joint development and production of the LBRM complex with the support of the governments of India and the United Kingdom. It is stated that BDL will produce both LBRM air defense missile launchers and Starstreak HVM anti-aircraft missiles, while the localization volume will allegedly be up to 60%. Over time, the joint production agreement may be expanded to include the LMM (Lightweight Multirole Missile) Martlet light multipurpose missiles.
The Starstreak HVM (High Velocity Missile) short-range air defense system was developed jointly by the British companies BAe (now BAE Systems) and Short Brothers (now part of Thales as Thales Air Defense) and has been mass-produced by the latter at the Belfast facility (now the Thales Belfast plant) for the British Army since 1997. The complex uses a high-speed two-stage solid-fuel rocket with a mass of 14 kg (with a TPK - 16.8 kg) and a length of 1.4 m and a diameter of 130 mm, which develops a speed of up to M = 4 and is capable of maneuvering with overloads of more than 9 g. The maximum firing range is up to 7,000-7,500 m and the altitude range is up to 4,500-5,000 m. The complex has a semi-automatic laser beam guidance system, which makes it resistant to passive interference countermeasures. A special feature of the missile complex is a separable "scattering" warhead with three 0.9 kg tungsten "darts", each of which has 450 grams of explosives, an armor-piercing core and a decelerated fuse, and its own laser beam guidance system ("spot"). Since 2013, the British Ministry of Defense has purchased a batch of modified Starstreak II anti-aircraft guided missiles with slightly more powerful engines.
The Starstreak HVM complex was developed in three versions - self-propelled (the main one in the British Army, made on the chassis of a Stormer tracked APC), portable and portable. A purely portable version of the shoulder-launched complex was mass-produced in small quantities and entered service only with the British Marines, and may also have been supplied to South Africa, presumably due to the difficulty of using a laser beam guidance system by the operator of the portable version. Therefore, the "portable" version of the Starstreak HVM in the British Army refers to the portable version of the Lightweight Multiple Launcher (LML), which has been arriving since 2000, and has a three-shot support launcher weighing 20 kg without a TPC and is normally transported by Land Rover or HMMWV. The LML installation is equipped with a thermal imaging sight, which ensures round-the-clock operation. Judging by the photos published in the Thales press release, it is the LML variant with two or three missiles on the installation that will be supplied to the Indian army as part of the LBRM complex.
Currently, Thales has launched a new version of the Starstreak air defense system under the designation RapidRanger MMS with a four-container automated launcher on the chassis of the Spanish URO Vamtac ST5 (4x4) armored car.
The Starstreak HVM system initially had limited success in the global market and was purchased in small quantities in a self-propelled (on an automobile chassis) in the case of Indonesia and Malaysia, and in the case of the LML installation - South Africa, Thailand and Malaysia. India, taking into account the significant needs of its armed forces, can thus become the largest customer of Starstreak in principle. The new RapidRanger MMS self-propelled variant has already been ordered by the British Army (12 combat vehicles), Portugal, Indonesia, and, as reported, the Indian army, as well as a number of other states, are showing interest in it.
Since the spring of 2022, the United Kingdom has transferred a number of Starstreak air defense systems to Ukraine - six self-propelled combat vehicles on the Stormer APC chassis, as well as a portable version of the LML and a number of purely portable complexes. According to reports, the complex has shown very high efficiency in combat operations in Ukraine, given that countering anti-aircraft missiles with a laser beam guidance system is a fairly non-trivial task for airborne aircraft defense systems. To a large extent, it was the effective use of the Starstreak air defense system in Ukraine that caused the "revitalization" of sales of this complex in recent years.
