Sea Wolf (missile)

Sea Wolf is a naval surface-to-air missile system designed and built by BAC, later to become British Aerospace (BAe) Dynamics, and now MBDA. It is an automated point-defence weapon system designed as a short-range defence against both sea-skimming and high angle anti-ship missiles and aircraft. The Royal Navy has fielded two versions, the GWS-25 Conventionally Launched Sea Wolf (CLSW) and the GWS-26 Vertically Launched Sea Wolf (VLSW) forms. In Royal Navy service Sea Wolf is being replaced by Sea Ceptor.

History

The earliest point-defence missile used by the Royal Navy was the Seacat, which had been rapidly developed from an earlier anti-tank missile design, the Malkara. As a weapon originally designed to operate against slow-moving ground vehicles, the missile had subsonic performance and was of limited capability against even early jet aircraft. It was used largely due to the ease which it could be adapted to the role simply by replacing the original wire guidance system with a radio command link, and that its small size allowed multi-round launchers to be fitted to ships in place of their Bofors 40 mm guns. It entered service in 1961, the first point-defence missile to do so.

The limited performance was understood to be a problem from the start and a requirement for a higher performance replacement was published in 1964. British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) won a 1967 development contract along with Vickers and Bristol Aerojet. Although only slightly longer and heavier than Seacat, Sea Wolf offered dramatically higher performance, with a top speed on the order of Mach 3, an effective range roughly double that of Seacat, and a fully automated guidance system that made engagements much simpler.

Testing lasted from 1970 until 1977, with shipborne trials on a modified ''Leander'' class frigate, , from 1976. Sea Wolf was tested with a vertical launch system early in the development period on a modified ''Loch'' class frigate, but for obscure reasons work did not continue in this direction: the GWS-26 "VL Seawolf (VLS)" being a much later (1980s) development. During trials, the missile performed impressively, once intercepting a shell.

The first deployment, in the GWS-25 form, was on the Type 22 frigate (2 systems) and later on modified ''Leander'' class frigates (1 system) in six-round, manually-loaded trainable launchers. It entered service with the Royal Navy in 1979 and was used during the Falklands War. The current version is the GWS-26 Mod 1 system on Type 23 frigates, fielding 32 vertical launch missiles (VL Sea Wolf) in its missile silo. It is expected to remain in service until 2020.

Description

Sea Wolf is powered by the ''Blackcap'' solid-fuel rocket to a maximum velocity of Mach 2, and can intercept targets at ranges between and altitudes from to . The warhead weighs and is a proximity fuzed HE-fragmenting type. In the manually loaded form, the missiles are stored on board in maintenance-free canisters, sealed until use and handled like a round of ammunition.

Fire control

The standard mode is fully automated and uses radar tracking. Target detection is carried out using the ship's surveillance radars. In the Type 22- and Sea Wolf-equipped ''Leander'' class, this was the radar Type 967–968 combination; the D-band Type 967 providing long-range surveillance and the E-band Type 968 providing short-range target indication. On the Type 23 frigates, these functions have been taken over by the Type 996 3D surveillance radar. Target data is processed by the ship's computers and when the system is live, targets are automatically assigned and engaged automatically (although this can be over-ridden by the Missile Director (MD) in the Operations Room).

When a target is to be engaged, the ship's computer slews one of the two Sea Wolf trackers onto the target (there was a single tracker on a Sea Wolf ''Leander''). Originally the Type 910, with an I-band radar, was used but this suffered from poor performance locking onto low-altitude targets hidden in the background sea clutter in the Falklands War. Low-level targets had to be engaged using the 910's secondary TV mode to manually track the target. The lighter Type 911 supplanted the Type 910, adding a second radar (a K-band set based on the ''Blindfire'' tracker of the Rapier missile, to control engagements at low level) and was fitted in the 7th ''Type 22'' Frigate onwards. Unlike Type 910, Type 911 does not have any TV function; the TV camera is retained only to allow the Missile Director to visually confirm targets and to provide a record of engagements.

When lock has been achieved with the missile tracker a round is fired and tracked by a pair of radio beacons in the missile's tail. The ship-board system constantly measures the angle differences between the target and the missile and issues guidance commands to the missile through an Automatic Command to Line of Sight (ACLOS) device transmitting on a microwave link controlling the rear fins of the missile. It is possible for a tracker to control a salvo of two missiles. The radar and CCTV guidance system were developed by Marconi Radar at Great Baddow

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