Red Dean/ Red Hebe missile.

Well, some immediate observations.

Red Hebe was actually the 1300lb weapon, not Red Dean. I’m looking for a reference for weight for Red Dean but it was less.

Red Dean requirement was 1951, some 6 years earlier than work started on GAR-9 (AIM-47). Doesn’t seem like that much, but it was a very fast moving time, and thats a fair gap. Red Dean was design, built, tested, and cancelled, before GAR-9 had left the drawing board.

Red Dean was never intended as a long range weapon. British airborne radars of the mid 50s struggled to exceed 18-20nm detection range even on a bomber sized target, so the idea of a long range AAM was simply fantasy then.

Red Dean was intended as an all aspect AAM, compared to Firestreak (Blue Jay) which was rear aspect only. It was required that it needed no support from the host aircraft after launch, so it had to use active radar homing. This therefore limited launch range considerably, and there was no way to use inertial guidance / midcourse updates like AMRAAM. The requirement was about 5nm I believe, though I believe Red Dean could probably exceed that. Its diameter was fixed by the active radar seeker, which couldn’t be any smaller, and was very bulky. Due to the lower precision of the radar guidance versus the IR guidance of Firestreak, miss distances were going to be higher so it had a much larger warhead. That’s why the missile was large overall.

GAR-9 is a totally different thing. It used semi-active radar homing, was later in timing and relied on a brand new radar (AN/ASG-18) of revolutionary capability and complexity that actually took the best part of 25 years to get into service.

Thanks Aerospacetech, I do love mid fifties to the mid sixties- there is always a sense that technology was really being pushed in a truly exploratory way!

Well, some immediate observations.

Red Hebe was actually the 1300lb weapon, not Red Dean. I’m looking for a reference for weight for Red Dean but it was less.

Red Dean requirement was 1951, some 6 years earlier than work started on GAR-9 (AIM-47). Doesn’t seem like that much, but it was a very fast moving time, and thats a fair gap. Red Dean was design, built, tested, and cancelled, before GAR-9 had left the drawing board.

Red Dean was never intended as a long range weapon. British airborne radars of the mid 50s struggled to exceed 18-20nm detection range even on a bomber sized target, so the idea of a long range AAM was simply fantasy then.

Red Dean was intended as an all aspect AAM, compared to Firestreak (Blue Jay) which was rear aspect only. It was required that it needed no support from the host aircraft after launch, so it had to use active radar homing. This therefore limited launch range considerably, and there was no way to use inertial guidance / midcourse updates like AMRAAM. The requirement was about 5nm I believe, though I believe Red Dean could probably exceed that. Its diameter was fixed by the active radar seeker, which couldn’t be any smaller, and was very bulky. Due to the lower precision of the radar guidance versus the IR guidance of Firestreak, miss distances were going to be higher so it had a much larger warhead. That’s why the missile was large overall.

GAR-9 is a totally different thing. It used semi-active radar homing, was later in timing and relied on a brand new radar (AN/ASG-18) of revolutionary capability and complexity that actually took the best part of 25 years to get into service.

Thanks SOC

This might help:

http://www.specialtypress.com/vstore/showdetl.cfm?DID=8&Product_ID=1706&CATID=1

You might also try the Secret Projects forum.