At one point they tried putting AIM-7 Sparrows and AIM-9 Sidewinders on the SH-2 Seasprite LAMPS for trials in air defense for its parent ship.Needless to say,this was never used routinely.

I posted about it on sci.military.naval six years ago and got a response from the author of ELECTRONIC GREYHOUNDS: THE SPRUANCE-CLASS DESTROYERS. It was not for air defence because the intended targets were Russian missile boats.

See below.

Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: Mike Potter
Date: 1999/12/25
Subject: Re: LAMPS armed with AIM-7 Sparrows

My book ELECTRONIC GREYHOUNDS: THE SPRUANCE-CLASS DESTROYERS (Naval Institute Press, 1995) covers these experiments. The intended targets were Russian missile boats. The large forward-aimed radar displaced the SH-2 Seasprite helicopter’s co-pilot. Upon missile launch the helicopter’s inherently slow speed kept it inside the rocket motor’s flaming exhaust plume, which seared through plastic fittings including the windshield and instantly filled the cockpit with opaque smoke. The test pilot, my source, “thought the aircraft had exploded and this was the end. Time got slow. After a while I thought, ‘It still seems to be flying.'”

Sunho Beck wrote:
> I found an interesting article about early LAMPS development in Norman
> Friedman’s _U.S. Destroyers_.
>
> On page 283
> ‘The manned helicopter presented far greater possibilities, however. For
> example, in 1968 attention was beginning to be paid Soviet antiship
> missiles. It was suggested that LAMPS might carry, as an alternative to
> ASW weapons, a pair of Sparrow air-to-air missiles plus radar and other
> avionics.’
> [snip]
> ‘Although the Sparrow was tested, it was not made a standard weapon.’

Cheers,
Sunho