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Actually not exactly. The early Sea Sparrow was considered "better than nothing, but not much better". The launchers were heavy and clumsy (which precluded them from being installed on the small ships - which originally was the whole idea), the illumination radar was manually aimed (and operator only have its Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeballs to track the target, which made the whole system next-to-useless in night or bad visibility) and missile maneuvering capability was insufficient.Mostly because Navy started to experiment with Sparrow only after running out of other ideas. Initially, Navy wanted a naval version of Army MIM-46 Mauler - a self-contained unit with automatic guidance and beam-riding & IR guided missiles - as a close-range, low-altitude defense. But Mauler never managed to work as intended, and was cancelled in 1965. They looked on Army's MIM-72 Chaparral as alternative, but it was a tail-chaser only, and Navy wanted a head-on interception capable missile.
Actually not exactly. The early Sea Sparrow was considered "better than nothing, but not much better". The launchers were heavy and clumsy (which precluded them from being installed on the small ships - which originally was the whole idea), the illumination radar was manually aimed (and operator only have its Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeballs to track the target, which made the whole system next-to-useless in night or bad visibility) and missile maneuvering capability was insufficient.
Mostly because Navy started to experiment with Sparrow only after running out of other ideas. Initially, Navy wanted a naval version of Army MIM-46 Mauler - a self-contained unit with automatic guidance and beam-riding & IR guided missiles - as a close-range, low-altitude defense. But Mauler never managed to work as intended, and was cancelled in 1965. They looked on Army's MIM-72 Chaparral as alternative, but it was a tail-chaser only, and Navy wanted a head-on interception capable missile.
