Sea Wolf and Sea Dart: Unbuilt Derivatives and Cancelled Applications

NMaude said:
If a nuclear armed version of the Sea Dart had been produced I doubt it would've been in large numbers, something I suspect on the order of two or three dozen warheads at most.
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Which would make such warhead VERY costly - the development costs would be spread over small number of units.
 
Dilandu said:
More efficient designs, that did not require orally or as much plutonium.
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Not much choice when you only have an 8.8" circle for your maximum diameter. The W54 in the Davy Crockett is about the smallest possible round-ish design, and it's 11"x17.5". Any smaller and your implosion efficiency goes to crap, requiring a lot more fissionables to get to supercritical kaboom.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Not much choice when you only have an 8.8" circle for your maximum diameter. The W54 in the Davy Crockett is about the smallest possible round-ish design, and it's 11"x17.5". Any smaller and your implosion efficiency goes to crap, requiring a lot more fissionables to get to supercritical kaboom.
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That's why I seriously doubt that Sea Dart could be equipped with nuclear warhead without rather serious redesign. As I mentioned above, Seaslug would be much better solution in everything but range (and range could probably be improved too at least a bit)
 
No, you can two point initiators, and pulling diameter down in one axis
 
Dilandu said:
Yes, but efficiency would suffer a lot. Two-point imposion isn't very efficient design; the devices with it require a lof of plutonium to work. So again, too costly for Britain.
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No they require very precisely moulded explosives to work and the chief problem is how little you can reuse that mould.
 
Martes said:
Looks like the shape is dictated by the extent of the booster fins mostly.
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That's I get, but why the forward part was made narrower than the rest? It didn't seems to save much space/weight, and just make the container at least several times more costly and complex than if it was a simple box.
 
NMaude said:
Would you elaborate on that point please.
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Ok

Propagation of the explosive 'wave' through the material depends on it's density and thickness.
This through specialist and very precise shaping of the explosive, the propagation can be controlled to arrive simultaneously around the implosion 'shell'.

The fewer the initiators the less difficulty in simultaneous initiation of the explosive. Timing being critical.
But the more precise the moulding of the explosive, the shorter the life of the mould. As each use subtly and slowly wears the mould. As it changes through wear, the precision drops off and the moulded explosive ceases to be the correct shape.
 
Very anachronistic today to see the article discussing the (later cancelled) export of Sea Dart to the Chinese.

Also, Sea Wolf BMD? Was that the Wolverine programme?
 
Reuben James said:
Very anachronistic today to see the article discussing the (later cancelled) export of Sea Dart to the Chinese.

Also, Sea Wolf BMD? Was that the Wolverine programme?
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I think many Western companies wanted to sell or cooperate with the Chinese in the 1980's, but the June 1989 Tiananmen Square incident put a stop to all these efforts .....
 
zjz said:
I think many Western companies wanted to sell or cooperate with the Chinese in the 1980's, but the June 1989 Tiananmen Square incident put a stop to all these efforts .....
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As I recollect, the Chinese were the ones who definitively passed on Sea Dart after the loss of two Sea Dart equipped Type 42 destroyers in the Falklands Wars. Similarly, Argentina’s new civilian government wanted to sell that country’s pair of Type 42s but found they were completely unsaleable as used warships after they’d sunk the British pair, which seems to be the ultimate example of an “own goal.”

I always thought that Containerized Sea Dart was most likely a reduced price sales pitch to the Chinese that paralleled the containerized American Standard missile Destroyer retrofits for the Taiwanese. Nott’s 1981 curtailment of Sea Dart production and further development probably badly undermined the export prospects of the missile before the Falklands.
 

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