PMN1

ACCESS: Top Secret
Senior Member
Joined
4 June 2006
Messages
1,193
Reaction score
1,114
Does anyone have the planned performance figures of the ASRAAM derivative that lost out to the Brimstone anti-armour missile?
 
PMN1 said:
Does anyone have the planned performance figures of the ASRAAM derivative that lost out to the Brimstone anti-armour missile?

I have only seen a very poor quality black and white photo of an airshow mockup. On the face of it, an ASRAAM derivative should have had a far longer range than the final Hellfire based Brimstone, but it seems that the rocket motor was reduced in size to accomodate a modified Trigat warhead.


Here is what Harrier had to say on the subject:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,178.msg13698.html#msg13698

I can only hope that BSP4 could further illuminate the matter?
 
Unfortunately not really much to add, except a side view drawing. Its a bit recent to get much published.
 
Offered to the UK MoD to meet the RAF requirement SR(A) 1238, the Typhoon air-to-ground version of ASRAAM had a shorter rocket motor with the lower impulse needed for the new role (plus the shorter length needed to house a larger warhead), a radar altimeter, and revised seeker software. The warhead was an off-the-shelf item – the Thomson Dasa tandem-charge warhead from the Long Range TRIGAT missile. This was located just aft of the seeker (on ASRAAM, the warhead was mounted just ahead of the rocket motor) so an external cable duct was used to carry electrical signals past the warhead section.

In hardware terms the seeker was unchanged from the Hughes 3-5 micron IR seeker used in ASRAAM, but used a pushbroom search for ground targets. According to BAe engineers, Typhoon retained an air-to-air ability that is “significantly better than the best [then-existing] variant of Sidewinder,” and would have been especially effective against targets flying in clutter, such as low-flying helicopters.

Mercurius Cantabrigiensis
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom