What Missile/Launcher is This?

[Brickmuppet]

This looks like one of ta series of proposed 5-600 ton FAC/Corvettes that Italy proposed some years ago.

This one has a weapon I've not seen before. The launcher looks to be a single arm twin rail launcher for Sea-Sparrow size missiles. My first assumption is that these are Aspides but I seem to recall that Italy had developed a sucsessor to their Sea Killer SSM so this might be it. Is their any info on the launcher or its capacity?

 

[RP1]

Was tentatively ID'd as Sea Indigo:


http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,18030.msg118257.html#msg118257


RP1

 

[Pioneer]

I do not claim to have an answer as to the missile, but the launcher looks reminiscent of a Mk13 Standard launcher :-\ Either way its one hell of a big launcher for such a small vessel! RegardsPioneer

 

[Petrus]

Here is a short description of the Indigo/Sea Indigo system that I have in my files (frankly I forgot what is its source):

Indigo was an Italian short-range surface-to-air missile system that had a very long and protracted history. First began in 1960 in Switzerland by Contraves AG, then transferred to Italy (Sistel Spa and Contraves Italiana) in 1966, initially with towed 3 and 6-missiles launchers and Swiss/Italian radars (Contraves Lince acquisition radar and Contraves AG Super-Fledermaus radar and IR guidance), then in 1971 as MEI-Indigo (Mirador Eladorado-Indigo) with Thomson CSF radars and an Officine Galileo optical tracker, and finally in 1978 on a tracked FMC M-548 launcher with Italian radars, only to be cancelled in the early 1990s without having ever been operational (it would seem that some, err, peculiarities of the Italian political system could explain that so much public money was sunk into it for so long). Less known is that Contraves Italiana also proposed in the late 1960s a naval version, with its own Sea Hunter 4 fire control and a two-arm launcher that could store (in a vertical revolving magazine) and launch both Sea Indigo and Sea Killer Mk 2 short-range SSMs (the taller missiles in the picture). A poor man's Mk26 of sorts ...
Range : 10 km.

And below you'll find a drawing showing the Sea Indigo launcher.

Best regards,
Piotr

 

[Brickmuppet]

Wow!
Thanks for all the responses.


That one Petrus is describing does seem to be the launcher. This was pretty a pretty big installation but it looks like a useful weapon for a corvette. Sea Killer doesn't have a lot of range but with a 150 pound warhead it's nothing to sneeze at. This little corvette looks tobe remarkably balanced for the time in everything except maybe Electronic Warfare.


UPDATED: Pioneer is right. Given the size of the missiles in Petrus's images this assembly looks a bit bigger than a MK22 & almost as big as a MK 13.