RN Nuclear NIGS ship

IF BS.1003 used on SeaDart is 16.5 inches in diameter, and BS.1004 used on RP.21 is 20 inches in diameter is RP.21 a sort of larger SeaDart?

What was Typhons ramjet diameter?
 
Zen,

That is what I have been wondering, whether the RP.21 represents an enlarged Sea Dart concept, if it did it could be approaching what NIGS was looking at???
 
Isn't the RP. baming system from Bristol Aerosplane Coy. (later part of BAC) whereas the Sea Dart was designed by Hawker Siddeley Dynamics?
 
Abraham.
Bristol proposed the basis of what became SeaDart, but the Ministery required the AW's (part of HSA) 501 team to handle the systems, presumably leaving Bristol with the ramjet work.

sealordlawrence.
speculating here mind. Two thoughts.
First is how this might have emerged, possibly during SIGS and the evaluation of the proposals, as a potential scaled up weapon thats able to fullfill the roles of NIGS or at least Bloodhound.
Alternatively that might have developed during the process that saw it become the smaller weapon CF.299, and its realised they can scale the ramjet back up and get significant increases in range with essentialy the same guidance system.

Second thought is if this follows the layout of SeaDart, its potentialy a more compact missile compared to Bloodhound, and potentialy more mobile. This would make it highly attractive to the Bloodhound users, and possibly the Thunderbird users too, especialy if it gave say a Blue Envoy type of range.
 
Zen,

I have been down both of those chains of thought, and I end coming back to that section from Flight Global in 1962. I can imagine that such a concept would have looked attractive. I ultimately the answer probably lies in some archives somewhere, its a case of which ones and who has the time to look into them! It is not entirely impossible that the official involvement of Bristol in the then next generation naval AAW programme began in the dying days of NIGS rather than in the early days of SIGS.
 
It does all seem rather confused, but then perhaps thats how it actualy was.
Technology was racing ahead, and this is the time the likes of ECKO had moved on to transistors, with considerable improvements resulting. So this is a periode where they are learning just what they can do cheaply and what they cannot do cheaply.

On the other hand it seems odd we can be more certain of things prior to 1957, and it seems later on, but in this strange periode between '57 and say '65, documents seem to be lost, and what remaines shows a very fluid time.

If I reccal Typhon is still live when NIGS dies, and the UK may have felt that it still lacked in handling what they expected the USSR to field. So they may have had the idea of a three tier missile defence, where PT.428 and later PX.430 solves the short range, SIGS the medium range, but they only have Bloodhound for the long range element, and that is already aging. A successor that is tri-service both fits the mentality and the persective of the times.

NIGS range sound earily similar to Blue Envoy, and this RP.21 also sounds of a similar sort of performance.

Does this relate to Type 988 somehow?

And just what is the theoretical limits of the ADAWS system with 909 TIRs?

According to my copy of BSP4 they needed a mach4.5 missile to bring down a mach 3 target.
Could they have directed a longer ranged weapon?

Hang on...another thought!
RP.21
RP.20 is a combination powerplant for Hawkers reseach machine
 
Reading Friedman's piece on Orange Nell last night I was struck by something, I will try and explain this as best I can but suspect I may not make much sense. However the basic conclusion is that even with NIGS I think we might still have been looking at a two tier system.

Sea Cat almost seems to have been procured as a result of nothing else being available, Orange Nell (which seems to be favoured) is constantly postponed due to a lack of resources (design and development effort as much as anything else) and seems to be scheduled for development after Sea Slug. Orange Nell is a much more formalised missile than Sea Cat in the sense that it fits in a dual 4.5 inch turret space thus requiring it to be properly designed into a ship. It also has considerable similarities to the early SIGS requirements. For instance, missiles to be handled like gun ammunition. SIGS does not gain big range it ends up with until the adoption of the ramjet quite late in the programme, prior to that it is quite a short range weapon and arguably more analogous to Orange Nell. It MIGHT not be too much of a jump to suggest that if Orange Nell had proceeded there would have been no SIGS programme but that NIGS would have fulfilled the long range requirement. Indeed until SIGS becomes CF.299 it would make sense for a longer range missile to still be in the works somewhere. Incidently and crucially Friedman is explicit in stating that the boosted PT.428 was offered not for NIGS (as BSP4 states) but for SIGS, which is far more logical than the notion of it being offered for NIGS.

However I must admit that I can not reconcile this with the obvious 1950s development three tier structure that is present with Sea Cat replacing the 40mm bofors, Orange Nell chasing the 4.5 inch and Sea Slug/Blue Slug filling the place of the 6 inch.

What does seem apparent to me though, and I am open to thoughts and comments, is that NIGS and SIGS ran parallel , at least for a period, then when NIGS died SIGS evolved into a much longer ranged weapon to fill part of the void left by the death of NIGS. Alternatively the evolution of SIGS may have contributed to the end of NIGS. Either way the sudden range increase that SIGS gets seems to be almost certainly related to NIGS dissapearing from the scene.
 
Sealord, Zen

Again, many many thanks.

This thread has become very impressive and far away more comprehensive
than the published sources. I must admit to having got a bit lost in following
the various strands, but the details emerging and clarifications of points in BSP
4 and Friedman etc are the best source I have seen. Does this reflect other
discussions on the Royal Navy discussion board as well?

The chronology between the actual US and UK systems and these alternatives
might be helpful. I shall have to do more reading.

UK 75
 
It seems like we're fishing for red herrings!

I think the 1962 Flight quote is a red herring. It could easily be referring to the CF.299 in its air, land and sea variants (or even the SIG-16 which was offered as an AAM). All were studied and the other two rejected due to various technical issues. It doesn't neccessarily follow that its referring to a new long-range missile seperate from CF.299.

Sea Cat in my mind seems to be a lucky private-venture that fitted the bill at the right time. There was nothing else in the field. Like I said in the frigates thread, the Admiralty worried that actually destroying an incoming missile was so tough that it was easier to knock the bomber down before it could fire its missile. Thus the funds from Orange Nell (hoped to be developed once Sea Slug was complete) were instead channelled into NIGS, another 'long-arm' approach. Sea Cat as a subsonic cheap missile did not seriously re-tread on the anti-missile approach.
Orange Nell and Sea Slug were designed at a two-tier system but the Counties couldn't carry both anyway and so you needed two ships (County and a twin-ended Type 41) for adequate defence. Doesn't sound like an economical prospect for a shrinking navy.
On the other hand had Orange Nell been developed then it's certain it would have found its way onto the NIGS destroyer rather than Sea Cat. It's also certain SIGS would not have been needed but it probably means that the Confessor of 1965 would be an Orange Nell successor.

My view is that WA.726 followed Sea Slug, that the joint team was chosen from the success of Sea Slug to develop a modified/ modernised version for land/sea use. The Army drops out but NIGS is written to cover development. Bristol gets wind of this and launches the 26ft long missile as a spoiler and at some point Naval Bloodhound (same electronics but new airframe perhaps Blue Envoy based?) as a spoiler, Admiralty not impressed with either so RP.25 entered (another huge missile and probably not practical for shipboard stowage) and then Boosted PT.428. We don't know what Armstrong Whitworth offered for sure. By that time some boffin has included the Type 985 and ADA and the whole thing snowballs into a much large ship etc and costs (perhaps with serious technical hitches) forces a rethink and navy decides it wants a more practical shorter-ranged missile around 1961-62. Thus it can cut Type 985 out and then the Dutch come along with a better and cheaper radar, enter the Type 988 and the RN jumps on the bandwagon and gets a 3-D radar after all. Enter SIGS as a replacement but Bristol draws heavily on PT.428 but as we know the Admiralty still wants Armstrong Whitworth as the prime contractors. Perhaps the move from NIGS to SIGS is less a technical shift but a contractural shift. Obviously someone felt they had the better team/ track record.
 
Hang on again!

AW.502 group is behind SIG-16.
Bristol proposes large PT.428.

Why is SIG-16 so obviously short ranged that it does'nt meed the SIGS requirement?

Did the requirement change? Which seems quite possible considering how these things go.

Or are we missing something here? Could SIG-16 orriginate as Orange Nell's successor?
After all it maybe longer than the ON study, but its more compact and ideal for drum storage.
Why is SIG-16 so slow (a limit of mach 3.5) and being made of aluminium permanently limited in maximum speed?

The US effort on Typhon is a two tier system, surely the RN would be thinking along just such lines themselves?
 
I think there are many funny things about Orange Nell which makes me doubt it was a serious project (possibly because of the technical issues of hitting and destroying a missile at far enough away to avoid debris hitting the ship).

We know Orange Nell was begun roughly around 1952-54 (I've seen both dates) and yet the Admiralty asked the US to develop Tartar in 1953 for roughly the same mission and size (4.5in-5in turret replacement). Now I'm aware that some officals thought at this time that the US was making much quicker develoment of missiles (mainly AAMs) that Britain which was having mixed results but even so why choose a double-path? We've seen numerous mentions of Tartar all over this thread and the frigate thread and in books etc but no similar mentions of Orange Nell. It doesn't feature in the County design history (but Sea Cat does as Green Light), nor does it feature on the GW96A or any of those missile cruiser designs of 1955-57. Since it has been described as a two-tier system with Sea Slug it seems odd that these Sea Slug armed ships just don't feature Orange Nell at all but have inferior missiles or gun armament. Perhaps GW96A could exchange its 3in twins for Orange Nell but that seems unlikely and given the cruisers wouldn't have commissioned until 1961-64 timeframe a designer in 1954-55 would have assumed a ready Orange Nell system by the early 1960s.

It would lead to the conclusion that Orange Nell died long before the offical 1957 cancellation (same time as GW96A) in favour of the Tartar system. Yet given the fears of dollar expenditure it seems odd Tartar was chosen over Orange Nell, despite the lack of funds to develop it alongside Sea Slug (why it was planned for development until after Sea Slug was complete). Whatever the reason very little work on Orange Nell was ever done and probably lies in offical preference for an American system.

Thus Orange Nell has become another red herring in our tale and SIGS has nothing to do with it, but probably the overall concept of a shorter-range missile due to technical issues with NIGS, rather than another attempt to hit supersonic missiles at close-range.
 
Hmmmm....odd statements being made here, contradicting whats in BSP4, for one.

Orange Nell was supposedly aimed at dealing with threats from the 1970s onwards, so its certainly true to say it is a precursor to SeaWolf if not necessarily related in technology.
Can we then say that ON was designed for any then current design of Frigate in the 1950s?

We're told in BSP4 that large PT.428 was aimed at NIGS.
But perhaps we should not confuse large PT.428 with boosted PT.428.
 
Orange Nell,

Friedman does not mention cost, he mentions resources, the two things are very different. What is most likely is that the various missile establishments were being over worked as it was so Orange Nell was postponed until Sea Slug development was complete. that postponement would explain why it never entered an actual design. It appears that Popsey/Mopsey were offered to the US but were rejected. The US created Tartar instead which was conceptually similar, this was rapidly rejected for what became SIGS. Orange Nell is part of the SIGS history. A highly simplified RN small AD lineage likely goes, Popsey, Mopsey, Orange Nell, SIGS, Sea Wolf.

Boosted PT.428

It has always struck me as odd that a boosted short range point defence missile would be offered for NIGS when that programme was looking at a system with a range of 150nm. In fact it is just a ridiculous notion. Friedman is explicit that is was offered for SIGS and this is infinitely more logical.

SIGS offerings

Friedman notes that in January 1961 the following contenders were in place for SIGS. BAC PT.428 (Quad launcher with 56-58 rounds weighing 242lbs), Bristol CF.299 (768lb with a quad launcher) and Vickers offering a variant of Tartar (Twin Launcher with a missile weight of 1,172lb). Sea Dart ultimately comes out at 1,200lb.

I remain of the opinion that SIGS goes long range around the same time that NIGS finally kicks the bucket in 1961.
 
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'Large' is not 'boosted', BSP4 quite clearly states that large PT.428 was two and a half times the size of PT.428 as a missile, using SARH, not beam riding.

Thus it is a proposal that is rather sketchy, based on the aerodynamics of the smaller missile, but apparently attractive to the RN for NIGS.

We could thus be talking of something along the following lines.
PT.428 diameter is 5 inches, multilplied by 2.5 assuming thats applied to the area rather than diameter we have 7.9 inches diameter.
If we just applied that to diameter it would be 12.5 inches.
Length could be between 12 to 20.5ft depending on the precise nature of how this missile is 2.5 times larger than PT.428.
What is clear is its a going to be bigger than PT.428 and use a different guidance system.
 
Sealordlawrence,

I agree the shortage is resources, there are dozens of missile projects from IRBMs, AAMs, ATGW, ASMs and SAMs until the rationalisation of 1957. The industry must have been pretty much streched. Perhaps that partly explains the decision to ask the US to develop Tartar on its behalf.
As a point-defence anti-missile SAM Orange Nell is Sea Wolf's grandad. Although with 1950s radar technology its open to question whether it would have met its kill ratio targets.
SIGS is an area defence weapon, not a close-in killer or hittile. The two are not the same.

The PT.428 story seems mixed, certainly the Admiralty was impressed by the basic PT.428 and that formed the SIGS concept while NIGS was on-going but the bigger 'Large PT.428' to NIGS was discounted on range and semi-active homing, and its seems the tandem-boost might have been a different variant. BSP:4 gets confused and attributes RP.25 to SIGS when its really NIGS but where it fits in the order of missile submissions is open to anyones guess. Boosted PT.428 probably was the tandem-boost variant and the first of the SIGS, which led to BAC SIG-16, which under 502 team design leadership became CF.299 with the Bristol ramjet. Oddly PT.428 gets named as Bristol and BAC, Friedman's list gives PT.428 and the CF.299 but Bristol had a big hand in both projects. The 502 team kept getting the offical support and Bristol kept pushing in leading to the co-operation on CF.299.

We go back round to the point that we don't really know what the 502 team was working on for NIGS, whether it was a super-Sea Slug changed beyond recognition or whether its the dart Friedman mentions.

I'm sure what the Skomer website calls Naval Bloodhound is the twin-ramjet Blue Envoy look-alike in BSP:4.

I wonder what changes, if any, the Vickers Tartar had over the baseline US version?

I agree the bits on naval missiles in BSP:4 needs work, nothing really seems to add up directly between sources. Perhaps the web is too difficult to unravel but I hope this thread has done something to straighten out the linage of British naval SAMs, even if we haven't made any startling breakthroughs.
 
Does anyone have a deckplan drawing of the County class? Would be interesting to see how the horizontal Sea Slug magazine is laid out.
 
Abraham Gubler said:
Does anyone have a deckplan drawing of the County class? Would be interesting to see how the horizontal Sea Slug magazine is laid out.
Click to expand...

There could be one in Friedmans British Frigates & Destroyers, however from what i can recall it ran the full length of the deck from below the hanger to the end of the flight deck, so it was quite a size.

G
 
Thorvic said:
Abraham Gubler said:
Does anyone have a deckplan drawing of the County class? Would be interesting to see how the horizontal Sea Slug magazine is laid out.
Click to expand...

There could be one in Friedmans British Frigates & Destroyers, however from what i can recall it ran the full length of the deck from below the hanger to the end of the flight deck, so it was quite a size.

G
Click to expand...

There's an internal profile on page 185 - the magazine starts at just aft of the foremast, and runs almost all the way to the launcher - there being a missile loading space just forward of the launcher, and a missile checkout station around the area of the aft funnel.

There's also a plan of the missile handling and stowage spaces on page 189, though necessarily compacted for length.

Both diagrams are for the Batch II ships.

There's also a cutaway here:http://publishing.yudu.com/A9cr/navynewsapril/resources/59.htm?skipFlashCheck=true
Sadly it lacks detail of the missile storage arrangements - but might help with visualizing them given the descriptions I gave above.
 
starviking said:
There's an internal profile on page 185 - the magazine starts at just aft of the foremast, and runs almost all the way to the launcher - there being a missile loading space just aft of the launcher, and a missile checkout station around the area of the aft funnel.

There's also a plan of the missile handling and stowage spaces on page 189, though necessarily compacted for length.
Click to expand...

If the magazine runs that far forward then surely it must be split to allow for the exhaust uptakes and air intakes for the engine rooms? Or do these ducts wrap around the magazine? Would love to see a scan of that page 185... even low res...
 
Abraham Gubler said:
starviking said:
There's an internal profile on page 185 - the magazine starts at just aft of the foremast, and runs almost all the way to the launcher - there being a missile loading space just aft of the launcher, and a missile checkout station around the area of the aft funnel.

There's also a plan of the missile handling and stowage spaces on page 189, though necessarily compacted for length.
Click to expand...

If the magazine runs that far forward then surely it must be split to allow for the exhaust uptakes and air intakes for the engine rooms? Or do these ducts wrap around the magazine? Would love to see a scan of that page 185... even low res...
Click to expand...

I guess the ducts must bifurcate around the magazine - in the profile the ducting is shown with a dotted line from the forward funnel down to the boiler room.
 
starviking said:
There's an internal profile on page 185 - the magazine starts at just aft of the foremast, and runs almost all the way to the launcher - there being a missile loading space just aft of the launcher, and a missile checkout station around the area of the aft funnel.

There's also a plan of the missile handling and stowage spaces on page 189, though necessarily compacted for length.
Click to expand...

I think you mean forward of the launcher, in either way you could be refering to loading the missiles, loading onto the launcher or loading onto the ship.
 
JohnR said:
starviking said:
There's an internal profile on page 185 - the magazine starts at just aft of the foremast, and runs almost all the way to the launcher - there being a missile loading space just aft of the launcher, and a missile checkout station around the area of the aft funnel.

There's also a plan of the missile handling and stowage spaces on page 189, though necessarily compacted for length.
Click to expand...

I think you mean forward of the launcher, in either way you could be refering to loading the missiles, loading onto the launcher or loading onto the ship.
Click to expand...

Doh! You're right. I shall correct the text.

Cheers
 
Sea slug loading and launching video from British Pathe: http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=69318
 
sealordlawrence said:
Sea slug loading and launching video from British Pathe: http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=69318
Click to expand...

Thx sealord :)
 
After reading about some UK ballistic missile considerations I decided to take another look at this and reread this thread and whole bunch of other stuff that I have come across since. Thus I now have theory that I would like to throw to the floor for destruction!

1) Looking at BSP4 and seeing the initial Bristol NIGS offering of a what was essentially another Bloodhound/Blue Envoy derivative with a single long tandem boost. What becomes immediately apparent is that the solid motor would be able to carry the missile a considerable distance before the ramjet had to kick in. Given the work that was being undertaken on 17-24 inch motors for Blue Water in this timeframe this would be a very logical approach.

2) Having merged the 4 booster rockets into a single entity at the rear of the missile the next obvious and logical step would be to move towards a single Ramjet mounted in the fuselage like the RP.25 and the eventual Sea Dart.

3) The BS.1004 that appears to exist at the same time as the BS.1005 which was intended for the Bristol X-12. This puts the BS.1004 and its intended SAM platform the RP.21 firmly in 1960/61- right before NIGS vanishes from the scene. By this time Bristol is getting much longer ranges out of its Ramjets and suddenly it becomes plausible that with a 20 inch mach 4.5 BS.1004 powered missile mounted on top of a long tandem boost motor using RPE Westcott experience from Blue Water could plausibly (albeit expensively) produce a 150NM missile that would perfectly fit the requirement of NIGS and offer a potential replacement for Bloodhound and Thunderbird.

Thoughts?
 
Sounds good, in essence of a sort scaled up SeaDart or Typhon? The higher power of the ramjet providing for more weight of fuel carried, and presumably a larger warhead too.
All needing a socking great booster rocket to get it upto ramjet speeds.
 
Sounds like a plausible idea. The various threads that make up the complete picture seem to be there. However given the RP.25 design, which was hardly practical for a warship, and the various other problems and issues with British rocketry development noted elsewhere on this site you have to wonder whether indeed Bristol came up with this idea themselves or whether they might not have gone down this obvious route.
Only the discovery of the actual NIGS work will ever answer our questions although this thread has made strides in pinning down the missile, the radars and the ship itself.

I'm hoping that Norman Friedman's forthcoming book on British cruisers will unearth more on these studies.
 
No problem, its the British Cruiser Book that has been mentioned on Steel Navy forum, but they quote the Amazon date of the Naval Institute version rather than the original UK version.

The Sea Dart Escort cruiser certainly would be nice to see, he did cover the Sea Slug versions in British Carrier Aviation, but the mention in Moores "Rebuilding the Royal Navy" certainly is interesting especially with the propossed ASW Chinooks.

A D Baker seemed to think that the book will be published next month so we'll just have to wait and see.

G
 
I am working on a NIGS shipbucket drawing, of a very speculative nature but its led to me think more about the Type 985 radar.

We have been thinking of it as being comparable in size to the SPS-32/33 as fitted to Long Beach and Enterprise. But its use on ships the Admiralty hoped would be no larger than the Type 12, or CVA-01 seems to indicate a smaller radar. CVA-01 is a case in point, being of novel layout the CVA-01's island is a fair way inboard and can't be that wide without restricting the flight deck. Anything in size like the American system would require a large sqaure island with considerable overhang. Now I've never seen any of the pre-designs to CVA-01 itself but going by other designs in Friedman's 'British Carrier Aviation' and CVA-01's eventual island layout it seems likely that approach would not be used. CVA's island is bulky but quite narrow. Therefore would we be better thinking of an array closer in size to the Soviet 'Sky Watch' or maybe slightly larger than SPY-1?
 
As Friedman says, it was thought that NIGS would be far smaller than Sea Slug and the first designs to use these systems were classified as Frigates and the starting basis was a Type 12 sized hull which rapidly (and obviously) to County size. Even a County sizes ship seems to indicate a smaller system than Typhon. The fact CONAS was more of a branch in thinking, the majority were conventional steam ships. Seems to indidcate something perhaps not as power-hungry and perhaps not as advanced as Typhon or the SPS-32/33.
 
Now I'm sure we went over this somewhee on this thread or a related one.

But its reasonably clear that Type 985 is not going to replicate the US efforts for several reasons.
The most obvioius one is its aim is to replace the Type 984 search and warning set. This means target tracking and missile tracking are to be handled by other sets and considering the time, thats not going to be AESA or PESA type arrays, but more reliable mechanicaly scanned sets.

In essence the Type 985 gives detection warning, and the low grade target 3D information, passed into ADAWS which will slave a tracker set onto it for fine grade information.

So no, Type 985 is not likely to be a C-band set trying to staddle the competing needs of different radar functions. More likely an S-band or D-band system and hence not like the US effort in size, of these S-band is the more obvious choice building on the existing sets.

So in a way the Type 984 dish size is'nt necessarily that far off the size of a 985 array.

However powerwise, nuclear still is the best option to get enough for propulsion, hydraulics and the electrics to run a NIGS ship, conventional solutions are likely to be demanding on powerplants and fuel supplies.
Remember they need to power four arrays.
 
Friedmans new cruiser book reconfirms that rn missile cruiser planning stops in 1957. A combination of carriers and destroyers now provide air defence. By 1960 the cruiser reappears as a helicopter ship. There never was a uk nigs or typhon cruiser (long beach). Such ships were destroyers
 
uk 75 said:
Friedmans new cruiser book reconfirms that rn missile cruiser planning stops in 1957. A combination of carriers and destroyers now provide air defence. By 1960 the cruiser reappears as a helicopter ship. There never was a uk nigs or typhon cruiser (long beach). Such ships were destroyers
Click to expand...

In other words, they were kidding themselves about the size of vessel necessary to take NIGS (and it's probable nuclear power source).
 
Grey Havoc said:
In other words, they were kidding themselves about the size of vessel necessary to take NIGS (and it's probable nuclear power source).
Click to expand...

It does not translate in any such way.
 
sealordlawrence said:
Grey Havoc said:
In other words, they were kidding themselves about the size of vessel necessary to take NIGS (and it's probable nuclear power source).
Click to expand...

It does not translate in any such way.
Click to expand...

How do you think they would have gotten around the problem of fitting NIGS into a destroyer sized hull then? Separate sensor and weapons platforms, as in a co-operative Hunter-Killer concept, perhaps?
 
Grey Havoc said:
How do you think they would have gotten around the problem of fitting NIGS into a destroyer sized hull then? Separate sensor and weapons platforms, as in a co-operative Hunter-Killer concept, perhaps?
Click to expand...

By making a bigger destroyer hull. If you read Friedman's book he will tell you the displacements and hull sizes that were being looked at.
 
I haven't gotten hold of that book yet. :( How big was the largest known proposal (or study) according to Friedman, and was it conventionally powered?
 
I spent an hour or so today looking at the NIGS files at Kew and it was somewhat revelatory. I had nowhere near enough time to gather enough information to tell anything like a complete story but based on what I have seen so far this is the way it seems to have gone.

NIGS was intended as a Sea Slug successor and by September 1961 it was being schemed for the missile destroyers 07-10 (07 & 08 were eventually built as the last pair of Batch II county class ships) however, by late 1960 the small ship weapon (to be Sea Dart) was the priority and was being discussed in its PT.428 form. At the same time it had been mandated that NIGS would have to be a joint RAF/RN programme but the RAF were showing no interest. The basic proposals for the programme were outlined in a 1960 report that contains two missile designs, the second is the missile referred to in BSP4 as Bristol's first NIGS submission (according to the file this had 14.5 inch ramjets, I believe they were the BS.1001 which is also diagrammed in the report), this second missile essentially seems to be the same airframe as the first (Armstrong Whitworth) which uses a solid rocket motor instead of ramjets (rocket motor internally mounted) and that in turn looks to be an evolved Sea Slug with twist and steer for manoeuvre and the four boost rockets replaced with a single booster. It would have used a modified version of the Sea Slug warhead.

The files also contain diagrams of proposed launcher and magazine configurations (Launchers are almost identical to Sea Dart) and a narrative on the radar configuration including one interesting comment about the frequency scanning radar being likely to exit the research stage in the near future (the indecision on NIGS being a logjam to the development of the radar) and there are naval files in the right period talking about frequency scanning radar research (that i have not seen yet).

It seems that a lot of work was done on NIGS and the associated systems over a number of years (2-3) across multiple departments, some of what I have seen aligns with some of Friedman's commentary about follow-ons to the county class. There seems to have been two main stages to the programme with a major report having been produced prior to the one I found that resulted in something of refocus.

Ultimately it seems that NIGS just died as the small shop weapon became longer ranged. Anyway, I hope to be able to find the time over the coming months to really go to town on this subject.
 

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