UK contribution to the NATO Nike Hawk belt

[uk 75]

The arrival of the Hawk medium and Nike long range SAMs allowed NATO to create two belts in West Germany using these systems provided by Belgium, Netherlands and the US as well as the Germans.

The UK although it operated neither weapon did contribute RAF Bloodhound and RA Thunderbird missiles until their replacement by.Rapier in the 1970s.

While there are accounts of the way in which Nike and Hawk sites fitted into the belt, I have not found any articles explaining how or if the UK systems were integrated into the belt.

I did read somewhere (Flight International?) that withdrawal of Bloodhound and Thunderbird forced NATO to ask Belgium to cover the resulting gap.

Anyone know more?

 

[alertken]

You raised this 4/20. UK systems did not fit into the Hawk/Hercules Belts, nor were intended to.

NATO in the 1956-65 timeframe sought procurement efficiencies by the notion of RSI (Rationalisation, Standardisation, Interoperability). No more incompatible ammo for buddies in one trench. So 49 NATO Basic Military Requirements: for each, Interested Nations would pool their Offtake, to achieve scale economy, fund pro-rata to planned Offtake, and secure workshare juste retour to Offtake. Nations could choose to watch benignly and buy Off-the-Shelf later: the whole point was to avoid R&D/prodn duplication...such as UK fielding 140 live Thunderbird I rounds, junked 4/68 (T-II 9/77) cf Hawk (and I-Hawk) >40,000 rounds built, some now received joyously by Ukraine.

UK took the view that SAMs should cover our Counter Force, not our taxpayers and certainly not those of Belgium, France, FRG, Neths, Italy (later Denmark, Greece, Norway). So we stayed out of NATO Hawk Management Agency (oddly, HSD long enjoyed a repair contract).
3 Thunderbird batteries protected 1(BR) Corps Command & Control; RAF Bloodhound II and RAFR Rapier protected RAFG (bar Gutersloh).
NATO, maybe, sighed at the squander, but there was no gap needing subsidy by Belgium. RSI failed because its ultimate logic was that US scale would vacuum-up almost every piece of kit, so jobs...which happened anyway, only in part because they paid for so much..

 

[uk 75]

alertken

as ever really grateful for your detailed knowledge.