History of Ducted Rocket Development at Bayern-Chemie

[Abstract] After a very short introduction into the history and the business perimeter of Bayern-Chemie, the paper gives an overview of the development of ducted rocket technology at Bayern-Chemie in Germany during more than 30 years. The paper covers main phases of technology development and highlights important achievements. The paper concentrates on hardware design concepts, selected examples of test results and major technical milestones. Based on the advanced state of technology, a contract was awarded to Bayern-Chemie in 2000 for the development and production of the integrated throttleable ducted rocket motor for the European beyond visual range air to air missile Meteor. This propulsion system provides kinematic superiority of Meteor over all existing aircraft weapons and enables continuous optimization of the intercept trajectory by active thrust control. The paper provides a concept overview and a short status of the development of the Meteor propulsion system [1, 2, 3, 4]. The part of the paper dedicated to Meteor will be restricted to unclassified information.