Common Anti-Air Modular Missile - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Common Anti-Air Modular Missile (CAMM) is a Surface-to-air missile

Surface-to-air missile

A surface-to-air missile or ground-to-air missile is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles...

and Air-to-air missile

Air-to-air missile

An air-to-air missile is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft. AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid fuelled but sometimes liquid fuelled...

made by MBDA for all three branches of the British Armed Forces

British Armed Forces

The British Armed Forces are the armed forces of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.Also known as Her Majesty's Armed Forces and sometimes legally the Armed Forces of the Crown, the British Armed Forces encompasses three professional uniformed services, the Royal Navy, the...

, scheduled to enter service from 2016. The missile is based on the airframe and some components of the ASRAAM infra-red air to air missile, with updated electronics and an active radar seeker.

CAMM is intended to replace the Sea Wolf missile

Sea Wolf missile

Sea Wolf is a naval guided missile system designed and built by BAC, later to become British Aerospace Dynamics . It is an automated point-defence weapon system designed as a final line of defence against both sea-skimming and high angle anti-ship missiles and aircraft...

on Type 23 frigate

Type 23 frigate

The Type 23 frigate is a class of frigate built for the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. All the ships were first named after British Dukes, thus the class is also known as the Duke class. The first Type 23 was commissioned in 1989, and the sixteenth, was launched in May 2000 and commissioned in...

s of the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, the Rapier missile

Rapier missile

Rapier is a British surface-to-air missile developed for the British Army and Royal Air Force. Entering service in 1971, it eventually replaced all other anti-aircraft weapons in Army service; guns for low-altitude targets, and the English Electric Thunderbird, used against longer-range and...

in British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

service and contribute to the eventual replacement of ASRAAM on RAF aircraft. CAMM has a longer range (25 kilometre compared to eg 8 km for Sea Wolf), does not need dedicated illumination radars and more launchers can be fitted into a given space. CAMM is designed to meet the requirement of the British Ministry of Defence for a Future Local Anti-Air Defence System (FLAADS) but MBDA refer to the systems for air-launched, land and maritime use as CAMM(A), CAMM(L) and CAMM(M) respectively.

Design

The design aims for low cost by modularity and aiming to minimise electromechanical complexity by implementing most functionality in software. It comes in its own launch canisters, or can be quad-packed into the SYLVER and Mark 41 Vertical Launch System

Mark 41 Vertical Launch System

The Mark 41 Vertical Launch System is a shipborne missle canister launching system which provides a rapid-fire launch capability against hostile threats. The Vertical Launch System concept was derived from work on the Aegis Combat System. Refinement of the concept continued through the 1960s and...

silos found on many NATO warships.

The land and naval versions have folding tailfins and both use a "soft vertical launch

Vertical Launching System

A vertical launching system is a system for holding and firing missiles on surface ships and submarines used by many navies around the world. Each VLS system consists of a number of cells, which can hold one or more missiles ready for firing...

" system, whereby the missile is ejected from a tube by a piston. A short booster uses squib

Squib

Squib may refer to:* Squib * Squib * Squib * Squib * Squib * Squib kick, a football play* Squib load, a firearm malfunction* Squib sailboat...

thrusters to point the missile at the target before the main motor fires. The lack of toxic fumes on launch makes launches safer for users, avoids corrosion of the launch platform and the lack of exhaust vents allows the launch cells to be much more compact.

In flight, the missile can receive mid-course guidance via a datalink before the active homing radar seeker takes over for the final approach to target. This does away with the need for separate tracking radars, and allows targets to be hit that are not in line-of-sight. The command and control software reuses over 75% of that developed for the Sea Viper system.

History

CAMM has its roots in a Technology Development Partnership (TDP), jointly funded by MBDA and the British Ministry of Defence. Phase 1 of the TDP worked on technologies for soft vertical launch, the low-cost active radar seeker, a dual-band two-way datalink and a programmable open systems architecture. Phase 2 began in 2008 and covered the manufacture of flightworthy subsystems, mid-course guidance firings and captive airborne seeker trials on a Qinetiq

QinetiQ

Qinetiq is a British global defence technology company, formed from the greater part of the former UK government agency, Defence Evaluation and Research Agency , when it was split up in June 2001...

Andover trials aircraft. The Soft Vertical Launch was proven over a series of trials, culminating in a successful truck launch in May 2011. The MoD decision on the business case for the naval variant was scheduled for late 2010 but the Strategic Defence and Security Review

Strategic Defence and Security Review

The Strategic Defence and Security Review was announced by the newly formed Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of the United Kingdom in May 2010, and published on 19 October 2010...

of October 2010 intervened. , MBDA are still waiting for the green light for CAMM(M).

Naval variant

CAMM(M) will be the first variant in service, replacing the Sea Wolf

Sea Wolf missile

point-defence missile on the Type 23 frigate

Type 23 frigate

from 2016. CAMM can be packed much more tightly, with up to four CAMM fitting into the space occupied by one Sea Wolf. It will be fitted to the Type 26 frigate entering service after 2020, and be an option on export versions of the Global Combat Ship.

MBDA is working with the MoD, BAE Systems Insyte and Qinetiq to integrate CAMM with the Type 23 combat system. This work is centred at the Type 23 shore integration facility at Portsdown, near Portsmouth.

Land variant

CAMM(L) will replace the Rapier missile

Rapier missile

batteries of the British Army from 2020 or so. Four three-pack launchers are fitted to a self-contained "pallet" that can be fitted to a range of trucks. The launch vehicle will not have its own radar, instead taking targeting information over a secure datalink as part of an integrated air-defence network and using the active seeker head for terminal guidance.

Air-launched variant

Since the CAMM airframe is based on that of ASRAAM, the current dogfighting missile of the RAF and other airforces, MBDA say that CAMM is "easily adapted" onto aircraft that now carry ASRAAM. There is no requirement to replace ASRAAM yet, but it is intended that CAMM will form the basis of the RAF's future short-range missile. The modularity of CAMM would lend itself to a family of missiles like the Vympel R-27/AA-10 "Alamo", which is carried in both radar-guided and infra-red versions by Russian planes.

Design

History

Naval variant

Land variant

Air-launched variant

See also

Further reading