Why bother, if the missile only have range to operate within the horizon? You need to fit a new seeker, an automomous autopilot - all the way battling the missile architecture limitations - to provide it with the capabilty it doesn't even need?
If you have a surface enemy within 37 km, it likely a top priority anyway.
"Inevitably" is a rather poor celling point for converted SAM, which main advantage is that it build on basic of existing missile. A major efforts to reconfigure Sea Dart into fire-and-forged ASM would be required. At some point, the question would inevitably arise "wouldn't it be simpler to just design a new missile from scratch?"
Historically, we know the range limit is not a given and was extended and this option would have to be explored anyway. Because the question would have been asked. Can you do a) beyond the horizon and b) radar seeker. It could take time, and very possibly it could have been implemented only during the work on Mod 2 - all depending on requirements and budget.
Right. You fire 2 surface-surface missiles and have your illuminators ready for AA fire immediately, instead of waiting very precious seconds. Or you fire one and can reserve the second rail for AA.
Which also means that missile is much more prone to jamming, much more like to be decoyed, ect. The advantage of SARH is that you coudl use big bad shipborbe radar with excessive power and massive signal processing and computing capabilities to illuminate the target. At 37 km range, it would be VERY hard to jam (the beam would just burn through) and almost impossible to decoy (the target is observed visually, after all)
It wasn't built, was it?
Yes, by late 1980s. Almost twenty years after.
OTL, Royal Navy settled for Exocet because it was cheaper, range clearly wasn't viewed as very important.
No, because 1973s missile did not have neither range nor homing capacity to go beyond the horizon.
Likely no, because the missile architecture is not suitable for any efficient seeker.
By the 1989, the sea-skimming Sea Dart would not look impressive at all.
Depending on range - even on M1.5 it's thrice as fast as a Harpoon, has the same target size and is a proper headache to shoot down.
And I'm trying to explain, that ARH seeker on Sea Dart would likely not work at all due to missile architecure limitations, would be very limited in capacity even if it would work, and would require somehow finding space for autopilot (and there are no laser gyros yet).
It would be much more noticeable due to both the missile air intake increasing RCS and its seeker emitting on rather high power. While it would be harder to hit (AK-630 may have other opinion, though), it would be easier to decoy.
We had here an actual person who worked on the missile, and he sounded more confident in the possibility to solve this, and much more worried about fuel flammability.
He admitted, that he never heard anything about any kind of over-the-horizon seeker, so what is your point?
And immediately suggested a seeker configuration.
Which is basically the same as I suggested before - some kind of immobile more-or-less directional antenna with electronic scanning as transmitter, and interferometer array as receiver. While it MIGHT work, it would likely be highly inefficient.
Well, I consider this a primary problem. With all respect to Zoo Tycoon, but we both are speculating here.Attitude. He didn't try to dissuade us
And neither considered this a primary problem.
No. He suggested that such approach might be tried, not how exactly.
Now that's an interesting option.
That's certainly how I'd want to do it.
True. Sea Dart is much smaller & lighter. Still, it's a mach 2 missile, with a kinetic energy of heavy gun fired point-blank (abeit less than 16-inch one) The sea-skimmer anti-ship version was supposed to carry a much heavier warhead, to remedy the prolebm.
Impressive!
The general destructive power of supersonic missile hitting at Mach 2+ is often underestimated. Many peoples are quite shocked when they realize that "flimsy missile" is actually a pretty strong metal pipe with a weight and velocity of 16-inch shells fired point-blank - or more - and could break armor plates through simple kinetic energy.
There is a photo of the aftermath that was used in an old HSD/BAeD advert. IIRC I saw it in an old British Defence Equipment Catalogue.
Not that I know of. The advert was a pair of pictures of the Sea Dart about to hit, and then the hole in the side I think.
Thank you for the data!
Dumb question from me, but why is range shorter for smaller targets? Clutter?
Probably because the distance they can be seen over the horizon isn't as far.
