Royal Navy Wildcat HMA Mk 2 carrying Martlet (LMM) missiles, HMS Defender. Crown Copyright 2021 / LPhot Dan Rosenbaum, MOD, Open Government Licence v3.0.

Britain Buys Hundreds More Thales LMM Martlet Missiles as Counter-Drone Demand Outruns the Magazine

Technical Summary

The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Thales signed a £36 million contract on 1 June 2026 for hundreds of additional Lightweight Multirole Missiles (LMM), the weapon known in British service as Martlet. The order follows an earlier contract placed in April 2026 and is aimed primarily at the counter-uncrewed-aircraft-system (C-UAS) role, replenishing stocks drawn down by sustained drone engagements. First deliveries are expected within months and continue through 2026. These follow-on orders continue a sustained buy that includes a £176 million replenishment in July 2024, placed after the United Kingdom gifted hundreds of the missiles to Ukraine.

LMM is a lightweight, laser beam-riding precision-guided missile designed and manufactured at the Thales facility in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the company says it has quadrupled missile output since 2022 and sustains around 700 skilled jobs. Open-source figures put the missile at roughly 13 kg launch mass and about 1.3 m in length, with a body diameter near 76 mm, a two-stage solid-propellant motor, a supersonic speed above Mach 1.5, an effective range beyond 6 km (a maximum near 8 km and a minimum around 400 m) and a warhead of approximately 3 kg. These values are manufacturer and open-source derived, and are not independently verified.

LMM is laser guided to ensure precision against a range of threats and is particularly effective as a counter uncrewed aerial system capability. This latest contract supports around 700 highly skilled jobs in Belfast, where LMM is designed and manufactured. Thales statement, 1 June 2026

Analysis of Effects

Laser beam-riding guidance is the technical heart of the missile's counter-drone utility. The launcher projects a coded laser beam onto the target and the missile flies up the centre of that beam, rather than carrying a radio-frequency seeker that an adversary could jam or spoof. Against low, slow and small uncrewed aircraft, that jam resistance matters, because the cheapest way to defeat a costly interceptor is to break its seeker lock. The trade is that the engagement depends on the operator and the sensor holding track on the target throughout the missile's flight.

The economics explain why the LMM keeps being reordered. British gunners have downed more than 100 drones in the Middle East using LMM fired from the RAF Regiment Rapid Sentry system, according to UK reporting. At an estimated unit cost in the low hundreds of thousands of pounds, the missile is far cheaper than expending a Sea Ceptor or an Aster-family interceptor on a one-way attack drone, although it remains more expensive than the Shahed-class targets it destroys. LMM is multi-domain. It arms the Royal Navy AW159 Wildcat helicopter, which can carry up to 20 rounds, it equips Stormer vehicles alongside the Starstreak high-velocity missile in British Army ground-based air defence, and it fits naval close-in mounts.

The missile sits at the hard-kill end of a layered counter-drone system that the RAF Regiment runs around its air bases. Detection is handled by ORCUS, which fuses radar, radio-frequency sensing and electro-optical tracking to build a picture of what is approaching. The first response is electronic. The NINJA system attacks the control links many drones depend on, and can jam them, force the aircraft to divert, or take it over for a controlled landing, all without firing a round. Rapid Sentry and its LMM are the kinetic layer for targets that defeat the soft-kill options or present a clear attack profile. The radar that cues the launcher is not disclosed in open sources, although the United Kingdom ordered eleven Saab Giraffe 1X three-dimensional radars in 2023 for short-range air defence of this kind. The point of the architecture is a graduated response that commits a missile only when the cheaper electronic measures have failed.

Personnel and Safety Considerations

A complete round combines a two-stage solid-propellant rocket motor with a warhead of roughly 3 kg, described in open sources as a shaped-charge fragmentation (dual-effect) type initiated by a laser proximity sensor with an impact mode. For storage and transport, a packaged guided missile of this class is most likely assigned to Hazard Division 1.1 with the relevant Compatibility Group, although the exact classification is not published. The manufacturer does not disclose the warhead fill or its net explosive quantity (NEQ), so the precise Hazard Division, Compatibility Group and insensitive-munitions status cannot be stated from open sources. Handling, storage and disposal should follow the platform-specific orders and recognised explosive-safety regulations rather than the indicative figures cited here.

Data Gaps

The order quantity is given only as "hundreds". Undisclosed items include the warhead fill composition and net explosive quantity, the fuze type and its insensitive-munitions qualification, the propellant designation, and the delivery profile by year. The cited 100-plus drone intercepts and the missile's headline parameters come from manufacturer and media reporting rather than primary test data, and should be treated as indicative rather than confirmed.

Corrections & updates welcome. If you hold open-source data that refines or corrects any parameter in this article, please contact [email protected] citing the specific claim and your source. Verified corrections will be incorporated and credited in the revision history. AI-assisted technical assessment based on open-source material. Not a formal intelligence product.