The ASRAAM is also the base design for the Common Anti-Aircraft Modular Missile (CAMM) used by the British Army, Royal Navy and several allied forces in the surface-launched role.

Various reasons are often cited including the ending of the Cold War and full realisation of the capabilities of the Russian R-73 missile, but many commentators think this was a smokescreen for financial and defence industrial share issues.

[9] This left Britain in charge of the project and they began redefining it purely to RAF needs, sending out tenders for the new design in August 1989.

[11] In March 2009 the RAAF successfully carried out the first in-service "Lock-on after launch" firing of an ASRAAM at a target located behind the wing-line of the "shooter" aircraft.

[9] ASRAAM is intended to detect and launch against targets at much longer ranges, as far as early versions of the AMRAAM, in order to shoot down the enemy long before it closes enough to be able to fire its own weapons.

[4] The main improvement is a new 128×128 resolution imaging infrared focal plane array (FPA) seeker manufactured by Hughes before they were acquired by Raytheon.

This seeker has a long acquisition range, high countermeasures resistance, approximately 90-degree off-boresight lock-on capability, and the possibility to designate specific parts of the targeted aircraft (like cockpit, engines, etc.).

[13] The ASRAAM also has a LOAL (Lock-on after launch) ability which is a distinct advantage when the missile is carried in an internal bay such as in the F-35 Lightning II.

[citation needed] On 8 July 2014, Indian Ministry of Defence signed a £250m ($428m) contract with MBDA to purchase 384 ASRAAM short range air-to-air missile to equip its SEPECAT/HAL Jaguar strike aircraft fleet and replace the ageing Matra Magic R550.

[16][17] In September 2015, the UK's MoD signed a £300 million contract for a new and improved version of the ASRAAM that would leverage new technological developments, including those from the CAMM missile.

The latter was a US Air Force stipulation to ease the logistics burden and save money by reusing as much as possible of the existing AIM-9 Sidewinder, of which 20,000 remained in the US inventory.

[24][25] At the DSEi conference in September 2007 it was announced that the UK MoD was funding a study by MBDA to investigate a replacement for the Sea Wolf and Rapier missiles for the Royal Navy and British Army respectively.

The Common Anti-Air Modular Missile (CAMM) would share components with ASRAAM, such as the very low signature rocket motor from Roxel and the warhead and proximity fuze from Thales but with updated electronics, an active RF seeker and data link so allowing for mid-course corrections from suitably-equipped land or even air platforms.

On 14 December 2021 a RAF Typhoon operating against Islamic State in southern Syria shot down a hostile drone with an ASRAAM missile.

Developed in four months by a joint MBDA and MoD team, It has been used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to provide short range air defence (SHORAD) against Russian aerial threats such as helicopters, cruise missiles and drones such as the HESA Shahed 136.

Images of the system appear to show a twin-launcher mounted on the back of a Supacat 6x6 vehicle, allowing it to remain mobile, whilst guidance can be provided by a Hawkeye electro-optical suite.