Aster has an active radar seeker. CAMM is also being developed with an active radar seeker.

The diameter of 180mm for Aster must be the missile, not the booster, which is much fatter, as the drawings show. “Diameter” always refers to missile body, not including fins. The booster fills the width of a Sylver cell, & if you take away the booster you have a short-range missile.

Indeed. BTW, the active radar seeker used on Mica is very closely related to that on Aster.

A-10 or A-9?

Pj we all know CAMM is Quad-packed that is not in Question, nice pic from the MBDA site though.

What people are discussing is if the VL Mica can be quad packed atm, in my opinion the answer is not currently. However it should be quad-packable as it is not a huge missile therefore it just needs someone to order it quadpacked in a launcher, the Greek FREMM drawings and specs out there show 24 A35 cells each with a single missile so that is where im drawing my answer from.

Furthermore the DCNS Sylver PDF shows only one missile per cell> http://www.dcnsgroup.com/files/pdf/Sylver.pdf it’s on page 2 btw. Im sure there was some information somewhere on the great interweb about the exact dimensions of each cell that i read. If anyone knows the exact dimension’s please post.

EDIT: After trawling through some crap what i’ve found is each cell is 22 inches or 55.88 cm square, seems a bit small but that’s from The Naval Institute guide to world naval weapon systems.

The diameter of Tactom is 51.8 mm, and it loads almost full bore so that 55.88cm would seem correct. Finspan for Mica was given as 480mm. So, there, no quadpacking unless fins fold (which they don’t currently).

With a 48cm finspan and a body of 16cm, each fin measures 16cm. A strake appears about half the size of the fin that, so for MICA ‘strakespan’ would be something like 32cm. If the VLU-cell inside dimension is 55.88 cm square, and you’ld take that 32 cm to be the diagonal of one of 4 imaginary squares inside that vlu-cell then the side of each of those imaginary cells is about 22.6cm. 2 x 22.6 < 55.88 . Hence, with folding fins, it would be possible to quad pack MICA.

Do the fins on ESSM fold?

The ship is drydocked right?. If thats the case dont even bother going down through the flight deck – that way you will still have a couple of decks to cut through to get to the engineering spaces with the big stuff.

Do what most people do in dry dock and cut a hole in the side at the correct deck level and go in that way. Makes a great deal more sense to jack up and push across heavy boilers and turbines rather than try and drop them down into the hull. Remember when you are shifting large chunks of metal gravity is not your friend!

Of course!

MICA also has tail fins, & the strakes protrude more from the body. ESSM was specifically designed for quad-packing in a Mk41 cell, & the strakes are sized appropriately. MICA was designed without reference to the internal dimensions of Sylver.

I think this picture (MBDA official model, displayed at LAAD 2009) gives a better impression of MICA & its fins.

And here is a photo from MBDA, of an actual MICA on an aircraft, which confirms the accuracy of the model.

I suspect that some modifications would be needed to MICA before it could be quad-packed in Sylver, whether aerodynamic, or to make fins fold.

ESSM also has both strakes and (folding) fins, and the span of those fins is beyond that of the strakes as well, just as with MICA. Moreover, the missile body of ESSM has a wider diameter (20.8/25.4cm) than Mica (16m). ESSM overall is the bigger missile. Still, ESSM finspan does not exceed the 0.62m span of RIM7-M/P, the sleekest Sparrow version, while finspan for Mica is 48 cm. Problem I think is VL Mica fins don’t fold.

By comparison, finspan for RIM-156 Standard SM2 is 1.57 m!

Friedman’s Naval Institute guide to world naval weapons systems, 1997-1998 giveS the following for Aster 15:
missilebody 18cm x 2.6m, span 36cm
boosterbody 36cm x 1.6m (2.2m for Aster 30)
(by comparison, Aster 15 total length 4.2m, Aster 30 4.9m according the MBDA)

http://www.meretmarine.com/article.cfm?id=108678

VT1 has folding fins. AFAIK, MICA doesn’t. Makes a big difference.

Like Mica, ESSM has strakes…
VT1 doesn’t have strakes, only fins.

perhaps they gonna lower the parts for the engine in the hull piece by piece, and build the engine inside the engine room 😎

pls, this is the umpteenth time someone suggests that and it has been proven a dumb idea (why go through a superstructure located on one side of the shiup only when you have easier access accross the full width of the ship, through main deck and hangar?) including by drawings of internal layout..

Yup Wanshan you are correct i have also read the PDF that’s on the website many times before to comapre it with the Mk.41 VLS. I’ve always thought that the A43 and Aster 15 are a waste of space as the are not much smaller than the A50 Aster 30 combo. VL Mica is an option for the Greek FREMM’s if i remember correctly and will use the A35 launcher for them. I now deduct that the Khareef class use a launcher built by MBDA and as far as i can gather the VL Mica cannot be quad packed.

I would like to see the CAMM missile used with the A35 in RN service as it’s a common control system with the larger launchers and would be ideal for the export market as i think Swerve pointed out.

From what I understand, Sylver A-35 through A50 fire Mica and can quad pack VT-1.

VT-1
Length: 2.89 m
Diameter: 0.15 m
Span: 0.54 m

Mica
Length: 3.1 m
Diameter: 0.16 m.
Span: 0.48 m

ESSM
Length 3.66 m
Diameter 0.203 cm to 0.254 cm body (0.254 m rocketmotor)
Span: ?

Juding from the above, it should be feasible to quad pack Mica (which does not mean it can already today).