World class: The UK's Sea Viper air missile defence system

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In a recent interview with Defence IQ, Cobham's Nick Young gave his expert insight on the UK's Sea Viper air missile defence system. During the interview Nick explains what this "world class" system brings to the party, how it compares to other platforms currently available, and its future capabilities.

Andrew Elwell  Good morning Nick and thank you for joining Defence IQ today. Could you please give a brief explanation of your role at Cobham and the areas of your expertise?

Nick Young         My current role at Cobham is as a Systems Engineer doing systems engineer management. However, I previously worked at QinetiQ providing project support to the Ministry of Defence for the Type-45 weapons system, which is the Principal Anti Air Missile System (PAAMS), or better known now as Sea Viper. In that role I was associated with looking at the trials data, qualifying the trials data, signing off the design and assessing the evidence to demonstrate that it actually met the fundamental requirements set down by the relevant defence equipment capability specialists in the MoD. My principal role was to spend quite a bit of time looking at the modelling data and the trials data coming through from various different sources for not only the SAMPSON radar but for the entire system. We looked at it all the way through from sensor through to shooter and then compared that to model data and qualifying the system in that way.

AE           By way of introduction could you please describe what the Sea Viper system actually is?

NY          Yes, the Sea Viper is a Naval Air Defence Weapon System that is fitted to the Type-45 Destroyer. It is, in my opinion, a world class weapons system. It probably beats hands down contemporary air defence systems. It’s based upon the SAMPSON radar which is the main technology enabler that allows the Sea Viper to perform in the way, and to the level, that it does. It’s made up of several different items: as I said firstly there’s the SAMPSON radar but then it also has a command and control element and then it has the missile launchers themselves – the SYLVER launchers. The system has two types of missile, the Aster 15 and the Aster 30: the Aster 15 is for close-in engagements and the Aster 30 for longer-range engagements. That system then integrates with the combat management system on the Type-45, which allows other sources of information to be put into this PAMMS system to allow it to engage with the targets, which by chance don’t happen to be detected by the SAMPSON radar.

AE           So what does the system bring to the party? How does it compare to other systems, such as Aegis, and how does it differentiate itself?

NY          Well if you imagine the previous capability the Royal Navy had on the Type-42 Destroyers you had a Sea Dart missile that is controlled by a 909 tracking illuminating radar. That capability was quite limited primarily because of the number of fire control channels, which allow a number of missiles to be controlled while they’re in flight and engaging the enemy. The thing that Sea Viper brings to the party relative to that is the number of fire control channels – there are many many more than on the Type-42. So, that allows us to overcome some of the Soviet-type saturation attacks where you get 20, 30, 40 plus missiles being fired at you; the Type-45 would be able to engage all those targets, near-simultaneously, which is a great step change in functional capability on the Type-42.

You can also compare it to what was the ‘previous master’ of air defence – the Ticonderoga or the Arleigh Burke platforms of the U.S. Navy with their Aegis system. Well, Aegis is quite old now, it’s been around for 20 or 30 years and while the software has been upgraded and various improvements have been introduced, the fundamental architecture isn’t quite as robust as the Sea Viper architecture. For example, it still relies on mechanically driven target illuminating radars for the terminal phase for the SM-2 missile.

Whereas for Sea Viper the Aster missile has got a fully active seeker in the front end, so you can play around with your engagement times quite well and you don’t have to worry how accurate the missile is relative in space to the target as long as the missile seeker is detecting it. However, for the Aegis you rely on this old, mechanical and clunky system to remain illuminating the target to allow the SM-2 missile to engage the targets in the end phase of the engagement sequence.

In summary the Sea Viper improves the number of fire controls channels relative to Aegis in the end phase of the engagement sequence. In terms of number of munitions the Americans can’t be beaten on these sorts of things, but in terms of the number of fire control channels Sea Viper really is quite impressive.

On top of that, looking at the SAMPSON radar itself and its capabilities in the littoral region where it’s able to track targets in highly clustered conditions and then compare that to the SPY capability, there is a significant increase in performance. A number of Americans have complemented the system over recent years and have conducted online trials because they’re that impressed with the ability of the SAMPSON radar to identify, track and engage targets. It is a first-class, world-beating system.

AE           OK, so we’ve explored the current capabilities of the system but do you think there are any potential future capabilities for Sea Viper?

NY          Absolutely. Like any defensive system you have to think about how things can move forward. A number of countries are developing new systems – the Chinese for example have developed the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, which while not a major threat to the UK per se, the ballistic missile question is one that is sitting on many people’s thought-pads in the MoD because they want to understand what we can do. Now, with a little bit of tweaking the Sea Viper system is more than capable of undertaking such a role. Whether the Aster 30 is the right sort of munition for that role is a different question, but the system has got the capability. It’s got the range and it’s got the ability to adapt very very quickly and very very easily to that role. And while something like the DF-21 represents quite a challenging target, there’s no reason why we couldn’t develop a system to attempt to engage it. That’s certainly in the initial phase, the boost-phase, but if we manage to develop the system accurately enough and identify the capability we need we could also potentially look at it in the terminal as well.

Obviously moving forward the other anti-ship missiles, like the sea-skimming missiles like the Russians used to develop, are still developing at apace as well so we also need to keep one eye on that too. We need to be careful not to over-look the low level threats we’re experiencing with this insurgency-type activity in narrow waterways. The question is: how much capability to you want a system like Sea Viper to have against something like an RPG-7. It’s not a reasonable engagement scenario but you have to think about that terrorist threat as well.

I think there is a lot of scope and ability for the sea Viper to be developed in the areas of interest in the future.

Contributor:   Andrew Elwell

Andrew graduated from The University of Nottingham with an MA in History in 2003. After graduating Andrew started his career with a niche armour systems manufacturer, which provided ballisitic and blast armour products for the international defence market. His first major undertaking was to project manage a UOR up-armour programme for an in-theatre MoD vehicle. After completion of the contract, Andrew headed up the research and development department at the company. This involved designing, developing, testing and presenting new armour solutions to defeat customer specific threats to all major European and International ballistic and blast standards.

Following this Andrew moved behind the desk and became Senior Editor at a news and data provider, offering proprietary analysis, intelligence, market research and data on the global security and defence industry. The role offered the chance to write widely on the industry, exploring new technologies and getting to grips with corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and debt and equity fundraisings.

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