Sealord,
I’d consider it extremely unlikely that any public source will be able to shed much light on the Active Sea Dart project. As stated I only heard about the concept from one disgruntled petty officer!. I would guess that an enquiry put to BAE may be the only route for trying to find out what, if any, serious progress was made on the weapon.
From what little I know it was a carryover from the work done on GWS27 ‘super-SeaWolf’. It was quite the fashion, at the time, to try and stick active seekers onto anything and trying to get a VLS setup knocked together was the logical next step.
As to timeline I heard about it in the middle of 1992 and it had obviously been knocking around, as a concept, some time before that. The BAE MESAR radar research, that later developed into the SAMPSON MFR, was under development from the mid 80’s and I always assumed that there was an intent to mate MESAR to Active Dart. Pure speculation on my part though. Anyway what is certain is that the Aster/PAAMS project was embarked upon in December ’92 and that put paid to any further development of the GWS30 system beyond that needed to maintain viability.
Range is, of course, dependent on the target being engaged. Kinematically the missile is good for a LONG way past the 40km’s originally advertised and the limitation was always with the 909 directors. The 909(I)’s now deployed, along with the upgrade rounds themselves, make the system hugely more capable than it was in either the Falklands or Desert Storm, somewhat obviously, and I wouldnt be so fast to write it off as totally obsolescent – apart, of course, from facing concentrated saturation fire which, to be fair, would also present problems for SM-1 or SA-N-7 equipped vessels!.
Thanks very much Jonesey, I wonder how cooperative BAe might be.:diablo:
Everyone I have spoken to about Sea Dart has held it in quite high regard for its time, the overall reputation seems to have been very good, I have been told that it even impressed a number of UN officers!
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