MBDA has successfully conducted air carriage and jettison trials of its cutting-edge Sea Venom/ANL anti-ship missile on board the Lynx M...
MBDA has successfully conducted air carriage and jettison trials of its cutting-edge Sea Venom/ANL anti-ship missile on board the Lynx Mk 8 naval helicopter.
The trials have validated that the missile can be integrated onto the AW Lynx and Super Lynx helicopters, which remain in frontline service with many customers worldwide.
Sea Venom/ANL has been developed to replace existing and legacy systems such as the UK-developed Sea Skua and the French-developed AS15TT anti-ship missiles.
Working together through the Defense Growth Partnership (DGP) initiative, the trials were conducted by MBDA in collaboration with the UK Defense Solutions Center (DSC), the Royal Navy and QinetiQ.
The trials were undertaken in March at the Larkhill Range at Boscombe Down, and saw a Royal Navy Lynx Mk8 successfully conduct a series of air carriage trials prior to jettisoning two Sea Venom missiles fitted with telemetry kits.
The outcome of the trials has been a de-risking of the integration process of Sea Venom on both the Lynx and Super Lynx helicopters for the export market.
The 100 kg-class missile is one of the products of France and the United Kingdom’s highly-successful collaboration on missile technologies.
In UK service the missile is planned to be used from the AW159 Wildcat helicopter, while in France the DGA (Direction générale de l’armement – the French defence procurement agency) is currently conducting the development flight campaign for the missile on a Panther test bed helicopter.
The Sea Venom is designed to destroy vessels ranging from FIAC (Fast Inshore Attack Craft), through medium sized FAC (Fast Attack Craft) up to large vessels such as Corvettes from safe stand-off ranges, but also has a surface attack capability against coastal and land targets.
Unlike legacy semi-active radar guided missiles, Sea Venom uses an imaging infrared seeker that offers ‘fire-and-forget’ capabilities in even the most complex littoral environments.
MBDA is pitching the missile during the LAAD 17 Exhibition, to the Brazilian Navy, who is upgrading its 8 Lynx helicopters.
