Navalized Euromissile ROLAND-II SAM system

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silkmonkey

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In the early to mid 1970's the German navy was experimenting with the navalization of both the Gepard SPAA gun system and the ROLAND-II surface to air missile system. I was wondering does anyone know if these systems were ever tested successfully and ever used? I remember seeing them in a old Jane's weapon systems book of that time period. if anyone has any information on either of these systems, especially the ROLAND-II SAM system can you please share your feedback, information and diagrams with me. thanks
 
Interesting topic. Pity there was no further info that cname out of your post silkmonkey :(

Regards
Pioneer
 
Well, there is a bit on wikipedia, I think:
From 1969 Euromissile studied Roland as a possible naval weapon for shipboard installation. Originally known as Roland MX and later as Jason the standard twin launcher (without search radar) with two below-decks 8-round reloading drums could be installed on a standard sized module that was featured in several proposed Blohm & Voss MEKO frigate proposals of the 1970s. No prototype or production systems were built with attention turning early on to an abortive vertically launched missile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_(missile)
 
drawing of the Jason SAM :
http://s193.photobucket.com/user/davidtou/media/NavalizedROLAND-IISAMsystemJason_Fr.jpg.html

There were one more drawing, i will try to find...
 
nickd said:
drawing of the Jason SAM :
http://s193.photobucket.com/user/davidtou/media/NavalizedROLAND-IISAMsystemJason_Fr.jpg.html

There were one more drawing, i will try to find...
Click to expand...

That's a great drawing nickd

I would very much appreciate that "one more drawing"!!

Regards
Pioneer
 
There were at least two different navalized Roland 2 proposals:
One from Aerospatiale using horizontal rotary magazines and a separated surveillance radar and one from MBB with vertical magazines and both tracking and surveillance radars on the mount.
 

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Source: Bill Gunston, 1979. The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the world's Rockets & Missiles.

Regards
Pioneer
 

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Tzoli said:
How would reload work?
Click to expand...
Well, there's sixteen ready to use rounds within the launcher. That's far better than most real-world/existing launchers of the era, like that of the eight cell Sea Sparrow and six cell Seawolf launchers, which needed manual reloading.
So, that's two Roland missiles per target, per engagement. equalling eight engagement before a reload is required. That isn't bad in the scheme of things, IMO.

Regards
Pioneer
 

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No!
What I see on the drawing is a two arm or two tube launcher with 1-1 drums below deck under the launcher. How would the arms be reloaded from the drums?
 
Tzoli said:
No!
What I see on the drawing is a two arm or two tube launcher with 1-1 drums below deck under the launcher. How would the arms be reloaded from the drums?
Click to expand...
On land based Roland turrets, empty launch tubes were ejected to the side and the launch rails lowered towards the magazine to attach to a new launch tube. I assume the naval variant would have worked the same way. There are videos on youtube showing the reload process, unfortunatly they all have horrible voiceovers.

 
Pioneer said:
Well, there's sixteen ready to use rounds within the launcher. That's far better than most real-world/existing launchers of the era, like that of the eight cell Sea Sparrow and six cell Seawolf launchers, which needed manual reloading.
So, that's two Roland missiles per target, per engagement. equalling eight engagement before a reload is required. That isn't bad in the scheme of things, IMO.

Regards
Pioneer
Click to expand...
It's 18, 16 missile containers in the drums and two missile containers on the rails.
Tzoli said:
No!
What I see on the drawing is a two arm or two tube launcher with 1-1 drums below deck under the launcher. How would the arms be reloaded from the drums?
Click to expand...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZTsf2tc6RM
 
Ahh so the arms lower the rail or clips to attach the next missile canister
 
Tzoli said:
Ahh so the arms lower the rail or clips to attach the next missile canister
Click to expand...
Yes, it's a quite simple method - once you see it in action. I had no idea how it worked either until the first time I saw a video.

The advantage, compared to Chaparral or the early Crotale that had 4 missiles, was magazine depth. The slower rate of fire on land wasn't a problem since radar guided systems could only guide one missile at a time, and your targets were aircraft not a swarm of cruise missiles.

As a point defense system on a ship the reload time would be an issue, especially with a mass raid.
 
It'd be relatively trivial to marinize the Gepard turret and guns. Just use stainless steel instead of carbon steel. The catch is that you need to differentially harden the various parts that move against each other or else stainless starts sticking to itself and galling, and getting the different hardening right is a bit time-consuming. This is actually tough enough on pistols where the only two pieces that are sliding against each other are the frame and slide, I suspect that it'd be even more "interesting" with automatic cannon with multiple parts all sliding relative to each other.

apparition13 said:
Yes, it's a quite simple method - once you see it in action. I had no idea how it worked either until the first time I saw a video.

The advantage, compared to Chaparral or the early Crotale that had 4 missiles, was magazine depth. The slower rate of fire on land wasn't a problem since radar guided systems could only guide one missile at a time, and your targets were aircraft not a swarm of cruise missiles.

As a point defense system on a ship the reload time would be an issue, especially with a mass raid.
Click to expand...
Agreed, an 8km range missile is not going to work well as a CIWS if you've only got 2 ready to use at a time.

That said, Roland 3 was supposed to get a launcher with 4 rounds ready so that was likely also in development at the time this was being worked on.
 

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