ENGINEERS at a Bolton missile manufacturer are set to begin work on new fighter jet enhancement.

This comes after MBDA, which maintains a base on Lea Field Way, Bridgewater Avenue, and its partners secured additional funding from the British and Italian militaries to complete the development and integration of next generation weapons capabilities on both countries' F-35 fleets.

Specialists will now commence the testing, simulation and integration activities in the UK and US, to achieve initial operating capability of both weapons.

MBDA group business and development director Paul Mead said: “We are delighted that work continues at pace to deliver Meteor and SPEAR capability to the F-35; it is also a positive step for the wider F-35 enterprise as it adds additional capability choice for all international customers across multiple variants of the aircraft.

"MBDA’s integration team has worked well with our BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin colleagues to date and we plan to build on this excellent foundation into the future on this key follow-on modernisation work."

This work will see industry teams complete integration activities for the SPEAR precision surface attack weapon onto the UK F-35s, with the next-generation missile enhancing the UK’s future combat air capability through its network-enabled, high load-out, multi-effect capabilities with extended stand-off range.

The funding will also see the remainder of the integration of MBDA’s Meteor beyond visual range air-to-air missile completed on both the F-35A and F-35B jets for the UK and Italian armed forces.