Description
The Exocet is built by MBDA, a European missile company. Development began in 1967 by Nord as a ship-launched missile named MM 38. A few years later Aerospatiale and Nord merged. The basic missile body design was based on the Nord AS30 air to ground tactical missile. The air-launched Exocet was developed in 1974 and entered service with the French Navy five years later.
The relatively compact missile is designed for attacking small- to medium-size warships (e.g., frigates, corvettes, and destroyers), although multiple hits are effective against larger vessels, such as aircraft carriers. It is guided inertially in mid-flight and turns on active radar late in its flight to find and hit its target. As a counter measure against the air defence around the target, it maintains a very low altitude during ingress, staying 1–2 m above the sea surface. Due to the effect of the radar horizon, this means that the target may not detect an incoming attack until the missile is only 6000 m from impact. This leaves little time for reaction and stimulated the design of CIWS.
Its solid propellant engine gives the Exocet a maximum range of 70 kilometres (43 mi; 38 nmi). The solid-propellant engine was replaced on the Block 3 MM40 ship-launched version of the missile with a solid-propellant booster and a turbojet sustainer engine which extends the range of the missile to more than 180 kilometres (110 mi; 97 nmi). The submarine-launched version places the missile inside a launch capsule.
The Exocet has been manufactured in a number of versions, including:
- MM38 (surface-launched)- deployed on warships. Range : 42 km. No longer produced (1970).
- AM38 (helicopter-launched - tested only)
- AM39 (air-launched)- B2 Mod 2 : deployed on 14 types of aircraft (combat jets, maritime patrol aircraft, helicopters). Range between 50 and 70 km, depending on the altitude and the speed of the launch aircraft.
- SM39 (submarine-launched) -) B2 Mod 2: deployed on submarines. The missile is housed inside a water-tight launched capsule (VSM or véhicule Sous marin), which is fired by the submarine’s torpedo launched tubes. On leaving the water, the capsule is ejected and the missile’s motor is ignited. It then behaves like an MM40. The missile will be fired at depth, which makes it particularly suitable for discrete submarinesoperations
- MM40 (surface-launched) - Block1, Block2 and Block3 : deployed on warships and coastal batteries. Range : 72 km for the Block2, in excess of 180 km for the Block3.
Read more about this topic: Exocet
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)