Sea Sparrow Royal Navy Query

[Cobra]

Hey Guys, i was doing some Research on the Sea Sparrow when a Question Hit me:Did the Royal Navy Ever Consider Getting the Sea Sparrow? Just Wondering about that,Hope I'm Not sounding like a Fool about this. What Say You? Thanks for looking. Dan

[Hobbes]

I get the impression that buying foreign weapons systems is actively avoided by the RN (or the MOD). The Sparrow wouldn't have been a good fit for the RN, it has shorter range than the Sea Dart and it's not as good against missiles as Sea Wolf.

[pyro-manic]

Short answer, no. Sea Wolf. The replacement for Sea Wolf is "Sea Ceptor" (dreadful name!) which is based on ASRAAM.

The RN does buy foreign weapons, but more so recently than in the past. They use (or used) Harpoon, Phalanx, Goalkeeper, Exocet, etc. And then there's Polaris and Trident....

[Weaver]

You have to remember how crude the original BPDMS Sea Sparrow system from the 1960s was. It was basically lashed together from whatever was available: the launcher was ASROC boxes on a 3" gun mount and the director was just a guy stood on the deck manually pointing a pair of kettle-drum shaped radar aerials at the target using a telescope. Compared to that, the Seawolf proposal was light-years ahead. The later IPDMS "NATO Sea Sparrow" is much more sophisticated, but that didn't come along until the mid-to-late 1970s.

[rickshaw]

Well, when the Mauler/Sea Mauler project collapsed in the early 1960s, the USN was left scrabbling for what ever they could find for a SAM.  While the RN had been intending to buy Sea Mauler, it did have Seacat, which while rather primitive, did work (and as the Falklands showed, even at the end of it's life, surprisingly well).  Both navies had long range SAMs, it was the medium-short range where they were lacking.  The RN developed Seawolf, the USN made do with Sea Sparrow.

[DarrenP]

could Skyflash have become Sea borne

[Weaver]

Don't see why not, since it was interchangeable with AIM-7, however Sea Sparrow only really became good when they went from the AIM-7E to the AIM-7M, who's digital electronics allowed it to have a longer, more energetic motor. Skyflash retained the short motor and used the volume freed up by going digital for much-improved guidance and ECCM capabilities, since the RAF thought jamming was going to ber a bigger problem than range.

A "Sea-Flash" would therefore have the original short range and limited maneuverability of the original BPDMS, but with better guidance. Attractive prospect? Possibly, possibly not, and you'd possibly only see an advantage if you had an upgraded fire control system and illumination radar to match. Since BAe would only ever have sold a Sea-Flash as a re-fit to an existing Sea Sparrow ship (because they'd rather sell you a whole Seawolf system on a new-build or big refit) that probably limited it's market too much.

Interestingly, Selenia, who also make an upgraded Sparrow called Aspide, have done very well selling it as an alternative to Sea Sparrow, although in their case there was no domestic competition, so they could give it their full attention. They also market it as part of a fully integrated air defence system called Albatross, that includes search radars, targeting radars, missiles, rapid-fire guns and a computer that automatically engages, then switches from missiles to guns as the target range decreases below the missiles' minimum effective range. It's really rather impressive by the standards of the late 1970s and continues to give good service. Sold well too.

Both BAe and Selenia were developing active-radar versions of their respective Sparrow clones, and both were highly hopeful that these would find a market as upgrade options for Sea Sparrow ships. However the early '80s agreement whereby the US developed AMRAAM and Europe developed ASRAAM effectively killed both those projects.

[rickshaw]

Does it come with wafers?   

[Rheged]

Does it come with wafers?   

No wafers, but the seeker head has a wide search CONE

[Gondor]

Interstingly, Selenia also market it as part of a fully integrated air defence system called Albatross.

That sounds like a Monty Python sketch to me 

Gondor