Kaiserbill from what I have been told you are correct in terms of Skua originally being designed as a cruise missile. As with most high end South African projects, the cruise missile project was two tiered, that then later developed into a three tier project. The three tiers being:
1.Lower-end, low risk - Skua
2.Medium to high risk - MUPSOW (and later Torgus)
3. High risk - Flowchart 2 (later Seraph)
Flowchart 2/Seraph has always been of great interest to me for this reason - paraded under the (flimsy) covers of high speed UAV's and "stealthy" target drones (to allow the AA fraternity in the field to test their abilities and skills on stealth objects - according to Denel). The Seraph brochure states that it has a maximum range of 1300 km, 10- 1200m altitude, max speed of Mach 0.85 - Flowchart 2 must have had similar performances.
Back to Skua The IDR article posted below (published Jan 1993) states that it has a 100kg payload (including external storage), however take out the landing/recovery cushions and parachute and you can then easily fit more internally and increase the weight of a potential warhead. Since we supposedly had developed tactical nukes to fit in 155mm G5/6 gun shells, it would be more than easy enough to turn these into strategic nuclear cruise missile (one drawing in "Those who had the power" shows off the ability to launch two Skua's from our then Daphne submarines). The IDR article also mentions a 800km programmed round trip capability.
This is naturally a bit speculative, however I know at least one insider who is adamant that this is the case.
SA Bushwar's earlier picture post shows the early prototype/concept with the mini turbine mounted above the body. What I can tell you is that Denel Dynamics have revealed that they are definitely working on a Skua successor that they refer to internally simply as "Target 2". I know that we hired some Skua's out to Brazil for them to test their air-air projects with, later we sold them a couple.
See below for an early and later brochure on Skua - I will post some more on Flowchart 2 and Seraph in time to come.
