Postwar British missile procurement

[Bruno Anthony]

Scrap all British AAMs in favour of licensing Sidewinder and Sparrow. Invest saved money in seeker research, and then build Skyflash and SRAAM-100 in the 1970s, leading to Active Skyflash in the 1980s.

UK has a weird inability to produce indigenous AAMs like the US has a weird inability to produce tank guns. Odd.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Red Top is a fine weapon but expensive. Its basically an attempt at near AIM-9L performance with 1950s technology. It was never fired in anger to my knowledge, so we don't know how well it would have worked in practice. I suspect its complexity would have somewhat outweighed its bigger warhead and better seeker. Probably fine on bombers (its intended target) but poor against fighters.

I'd like to see some evidence of any SARH weapon that proved more than marginally useful in combat prior to the late 70s / early 80s (R-27 / Sky Flash / AIM-7M). Possibly AIM-54, though it has a terminal active phase.

Important to remember that AFAIK all initial AAM programs were designed to shoot down high flying Mach 0.9 (Eagle had juice for supersonic bombers) bombers. Can’t really fault their failures against maneuvering fighters.

 

[pathology_doc]

Red Top is a fine weapon but expensive. Its basically an attempt at near AIM-9L performance with 1950s technology. It was never fired in anger to my knowledge, so we don't know how well it would have worked in practice. I suspect its complexity would have somewhat outweighed its bigger warhead and better seeker. Probably fine on bombers (its intended target) but poor against fighters.

I'd like to see some evidence of any SARH weapon that proved more than marginally useful in combat prior to the late 70s / early 80s (R-27 / Sky Flash / AIM-7M). Possibly AIM-54, though it has a terminal active phase.

Important to remember that AFAIK all initial AAM programs were designed to shoot down high flying Mach 0.9 (Eagle had juice for supersonic bombers) bombers. Can’t really fault their failures against maneuvering fighters.

Falcon arose out of a project for a defensive missile to be used by bombers against attacking fighters. However, given that the airplanes it ended up being deployed on in US service were almost exclusively purpose-built interceptors, it's clear that this original intention had a very short lifespan.

 

[Siberia]

People have discussed guidance and to a lesser extent physical design, but has anyone mentioned propulsion? Solid fuels especially seem pretty important for the various types of missiles.

 

[Hood]

I have just come across an interesting snippet from a letter from the French Minister of Defence Michel Debré dated September 1971 following some Anglo-French collaboration talks (Jaguar et al).
In the letter he confirms a proposal to collaborate with UK industry in the development and production phases of the Matra Super 530 and for the production phase of the Matra 550 Magic.

Given his comment that he hopes that if the UK does not seek a national solution to "the programmes in question" that it would favour an Anglo-French collaboration I would conclude that the Super 530 must have been in the running along with Sparrow for ASR.1219 (Project XJ.521) that was issued in Feb 1972 and which resulted in the selection of Skyflash.

Given that Super 530 and Skyflash both entered development and production at the same time it looks possible that at some stage there was a possibility of an Anglo-French Super 530, perhaps a Marconi seeker on the French missile?

 

[timmymagic]

UK has a weird inability to produce indigenous AAMs like the US has a weird inability to produce tank guns. Odd.

And yet we ended up today with Asraam and Meteor....something changed...

Given that Super 530 and Skyflash both entered development and production at the same time it looks possible that at some stage there was a possibility of an Anglo-French Super 530, perhaps a Marconi seeker on the French missile?

What would we have hung it on though? We were really keen on semi conformal carriage through Phanton, Tornado ADV and then Typhoon.

 

[Scott Kenny]

IMO, the serious failing was not pushing Taildog/SRAAM development. A missile that will only indicate a lockon when the target is within the no-escape zone. Carrying 4-8 of those would have easily replaced any guns on an aircraft.

 

[Hood]

What would we have hung it on though? We were really keen on semi conformal carriage through Phanton, Tornado ADV and then Typhoon.

Good question. Which is probably why the Sparrow was always going to be a shoe-in given it had to fit on Phantom.
Given ADV at this point was still a drawing board doodle, its possible it may have been reconfigured for conformal fitting. The Super 530 was a chunky beast for sure - but then its no weirder than hanging Sea Darts off a Vulcan!

Reading between the lines of the letter Debré could probably sense a UK-US weapon was the likely result and he wanted to avoid that if possible.

 

[Pirate Pete]

IMO, the serious failing was not pushing Taildog/SRAAM development. A missile that will only indicate a lockon when the target is within the no-escape zone. Carrying 4-8 of those would have easily replaced any guns on an aircraft.

I seem to recall that the U.S. in particular discovered that guns were not ‘outdated’ during the Vietnam conflict.
Missiles are all well and good, but it was found that in an ‘old fashioned’ dogfight, guns are very useful.

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

For short range IR, the problem was the Sidewinder was just so good. It’s basic objective and philosophy of providing a degree of guidance to a cheap 3inch was delivered with clever, elegant, indeed brilliant design which amounted to miniaturisation before the phrase had even been invented. Cheap equals quantity which has a quality all of its own. Sure Firestreak and Red Top offered respectable performance but they’re just uncompetitive in the wider market. Then in the nineties electronic miniaturisation offered more performance and was available to everyone the Sidewinder has gradually lost its exclusivity.

As for radar, the Brits initially went for fire and forget Red Dean but the it’s range was not too different to Sidewinder, ok front aspect, but it was really heavy, expensive and draggy. So semi-active was the way forwards which are inherently launch platform dependent. The only two U.K. produced fighters capable of supporting a capable radar, ie the Sea Vixen and Javelin didn’t make it to the next variant and worthy replacements, ie F155 and P1121, were strangled at birth. It’s not that surprising that nothing really emerged until the tarted up Sparrow aka Skyflash for Tonka F3.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I seem to recall that the U.S. in particular discovered that guns were not ‘outdated’ during the Vietnam conflict.
Missiles are all well and good, but it was found that in an ‘old fashioned’ dogfight, guns are very useful.

The problem in Vietnam was that rear-aspect sidewinders would indicate a lock when the target aircraft was not within the missile's kinematic engagement capabilities.

Taildog was supposed to be able to engage a target anywhere the seeker could lock onto it.

What the US did was teach the pilots to fly the missile, instead of making a missile that worked the way the pilots wanted it to.

 

[Siberia]

It’s not that surprising that nothing really emerged until the tarted up Sparrow aka Skyflash for Tonka F3.

Tarted up? It was a little more than that as I understand things.