SS.11
Encyclopedia
SS.11 is the designation of the Nord Aviation
Nord Aviation
Nord-Aviation was a state-owned French aircraft manufacturer. It was created on October 1, 1954 upon the acquisition of SFECMAS by SNCAN...

 MCLOS
MCLOS
MCLOS is a first-generation method for guiding guided missiles.With an MCLOS missile, the operator must track the missile and the target simultaneously and guide the missile to the target. Typically the missile is steered with a joystick, and its path is observed through a periscope-type...

 wire-guided
Wire-guided missile
A wire-guided missile is a missile that is guided by signals sent to it via thin wires connected between the missile and its guidance mechanism, which is located somewhere near the launch site. As the missile flies, the wires are reeled out behind it...

 anti-tank missile
Anti-tank guided missile
An anti-tank missile , anti-tank guided missile , anti-tank guided weapon or anti-armor guided weapon is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy heavily-armored military vehicles....

. In American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 service the missile was designated the AGM-22. The missile entered service with the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 Army in 1956. Production of the SS.11 ceased some time in the 1980s but in 1978 168,450 missiles had been produced. The price of the SS.11 in the late 1960s was stated at approximately $US1,900 dollars.

Development

Development of an improved version of the SS.10 (Nord-5203) began in 1953 as the Nord-5210. The missile was intended as a heavy version of the SS.10 for use from vehicles, ships and helicopters, with even an infantry version developed later. The missile entered service with the French army under the designation SS.11. It was used as the first helicopter-mounted (on Alouette IIs) anti-tank missile in the world.

From 1962 a "B" model of the missile was produced, which replaced some of the original electronics with solid state components. The transistorisation provided improved handling, which allowed the missile pilots to over-correct less.. This was the version used for development of an infantry version, in which the operator carried three warheads and had a "waist belt fire-control" and three other men carried the missile minus its warhead.

One of the most unique uses of the SS.11 was that of probably the smallest anti-shipping missile in the world, with the Swedish Army employing it in the anti-landing craft role for decades, until it was replaced by a specialized version of the AGM-114 Hellfire
AGM-114 Hellfire
The AGM-114 Hellfire is an air-to-surface missile developed primarily for anti-armor use. It has multi-mission, multi-target precision-strike capability, and can be launched from multiple air, sea, and ground platforms. The Hellfire missile is the primary 100 lb-class air-to-ground precision...

.

History

The first combat use of the SS.11 was in 1956 being fitted as an experiment to a MD 311 an early version of the French Air Force Dassault MD 315 Flamant
Dassault MD 315 Flamant
|-See also:-References:NotesBibliography*Bridgman, Leonard Jane's All The World's Aircraft 1953-54. London:Jane's, 1953....

 light twin engine transports in the Algerian-French conflict as a method of attacking against fortified caves located in steep mountain gorges. The combat experiment proved extremely successful and became standard on other French Air Force MD 311s stationed in the Algerian war theater. From this early combat experience in Algeria with fixed wing aircraft firing the SS.11, the French Army took note and introduced the world's first specialized combat helicopter firing antitank missiles, based on the Alouette II and later the Alouette III that fired both the earlier surface to surface SS.11 and the AS.11 developed for air to surface firing from aircraft, both of which saw extensive combat in that conflict from 1958 to 1962.

After the cancellation of the SSM-A-23 "Dart" in 1958 the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 began evaluating the SS.11, and accepted it into service in 1961 as the AGM-22A. The missile was deployed from UH-1B Huey
UH-1 Iroquois
The Bell UH-1 Iroquois is a military helicopter powered by a single, turboshaft engine, with a two-bladed main rotor and tail rotor. The helicopter was developed by Bell Helicopter to meet the United States Army's requirement for a medical evacuation and utility helicopter in 1952, and first flew...

 helicopters using either the XM11 or M22 armament subsystems. In US Army service, the SS.11 was used mainly to develop tactics employing antitank helicopters and train future helicopter crews. In September 1965, 12 US Army UH-1B helicopters belonging to a special unit, fitted with the XM-58 stabilized sight arrived in Vietnam. One month later they fired AGM-22s in combat.

During the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the Israeli Army was equipped with a large number of SS.11s supplied by France. But unlike the SS.10 that saw combat in the 1956 War, it is unknown whether the SS.11 saw combat with the Israeli Army.

In 1966 the French Navy did an evaluation of the SS.11(M) and SS.12(M) from the fast patrol boat La Combattante. In 1966, the Libyan Navy ordered three fast patrol boats from Vosper (the Sebha, Sirte and Susa). Delivered in 1968, these were the first naval vessels to be armed with the SS.11(M) and AS.12(M) being armed with four on each side of the vessel's bridge. The Libyan fast patrol boats proved to be a very low cost way to give long range heavy firepower to small naval vessels. Other navies soon followed Libya and bought the SS.12(M) and SS.11(M) for their light naval vessels; among them Brunei, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Senegal, and Tunisia. NORD also developed a ten missile trainable launcher for either the SS.11(M) or SS.12(M) which was sold in numbers due to its extremely cost effective firepower for both light and medium size naval craft.

During the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...

 both the 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...

 and the British Royal Marines
Royal Marines
The Corps of Her Majesty's Royal Marines, commonly just referred to as the Royal Marines , are the marine corps and amphibious infantry of the United Kingdom and, along with the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service...

 used Westland Scout
Westland Scout
The Westland Scout was a general purpose military light helicopter developed by Westland Helicopters. It was closely related to the Westland Wasp naval helicopter.-Design and development:...

s armed with the SS.11. On the 14 June 1982 two Army and two Marine Scouts attacked Argentine positions on the south-west outskirts of Port Stanley. Of the ten missiles fired nine hit their targets and one was lost due to a command wire breaking.

Description

A variety of warheads are available for the missile:
  • 140AC hollow-charge - 600 mm versus RHA
    Rolled homogeneous armour
    Rolled homogeneous armour is a type of steel which is used to armour vehicles.-Composition:Armoured steel must be hard yet impervious to shock in order to resist high velocity metal projectiles. Steel with these characteristics is produced by processing cast steel billets of appropriate size and...

  • 140AP02 blast-fragmentation - 10 mm steel plate
  • 140AP59 anti personnel
  • 140CCN anti-shipping


On launch the SNPE rocket booster, with two outlets on the side of the missile body, burns for 1.2 seconds, after which the Sophie sustainer engine, with single outlet in the rear of the missile body burns for 20 seconds.

Unlike the earlier SS.10 which steered similar to an airplane with small flight controls, called "spoilers", located on the missiles wings, the SS.11 is steered in flight by unique system developed by NORD for France's first 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...

, the AA.20
AA.20
The AA.20 was a French air-to-air missile, developed by Nord Aviation, and was one of the first such missiles adopted into services in Western Europe. Production began at Chatillon, France in 1956...

, called TVC (thrust vectoring control) where four small vanes are located around the sustainer's exhaust which under command momentarily push into the sustainer's thrust causing the missile to move in the direction commanded. Since the missile spins slowly in flight by having the four swept wings slightly offset, a gyroscope
Gyroscope
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum. In essence, a mechanical gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disk whose axle is free to take any orientation...

 is needed to determine the missile's relative orientation to the ground, that is, up, down and right, left. Unlike the earlier spoiler flight control, TVC is far more precise method of controlling a missile in flight. TVC has been copied by other missile designs including the Russians with their AT-3 Sagger and the Euromissile HOT
Euromissile HOT
The HOT is a second-generation long-range anti-tank missile system developed originally as an effort to meet a joint German-French Army requirement, by the then German firm Bolkow and the French firm Nord, to replace the older SS.11 wire guided...

 and MILAN
MILAN
MILAN " is French and German for "kite bird") is a European anti-tank guided missile. Design of the MILAN started in 1962. It was ready for trials in 1971, and was accepted for service in 1972. It is a wire guided SACLOS missile, which means the sight of the launch unit has to be aimed at the...

 developed by joint venture of the French and Germans.

Due to the manual nature of the guidance, called MCLOS
MCLOS
MCLOS is a first-generation method for guiding guided missiles.With an MCLOS missile, the operator must track the missile and the target simultaneously and guide the missile to the target. Typically the missile is steered with a joystick, and its path is observed through a periscope-type...

, where the operator had to first gain control of the missile and bring it into his line of sight with the target, engagements of targets at short range were poor, but beyond 500 meters accuracy was good to excellent for a well trained operator. In 1967 (by that time NORD had been merged with Aerospatiale) a version of the SS.11, called Harpon, was developed with a much improved guidance system called SACLOS
SACLOS
SACLOS is an acronym for Semi-Automatic Command to Line of Sight, a second-generation method of missile guidance. In SACLOS, the operator has to continually point a sighting device at the target while the missile is in flight...

 where the missile is automatically tracked in flight and brought to the gunners line of sight. This guidance system drastically increases the SS.11 accuracy, especially at engagement ranges of less than 500 meters.

Models

  • SS.11 / AGM-22 - Surface-to-surface wire-guided anti-tank missile.
    • SS.11A1 XAGM-22A
    • SS.11B1 XAGM-22B - much improved with transistors
    • SS.11B1 (training) XATM-22B
  • AS.11 - Air-to-surface missile.
  • SS.11M - Maritime surface-to-surface wire-guided anti-ship missile.
  • HARPON SS.11 version with SACLOS
    SACLOS
    SACLOS is an acronym for Semi-Automatic Command to Line of Sight, a second-generation method of missile guidance. In SACLOS, the operator has to continually point a sighting device at the target while the missile is in flight...

     guidance replacing MCLOS
    MCLOS
    MCLOS is a first-generation method for guiding guided missiles.With an MCLOS missile, the operator must track the missile and the target simultaneously and guide the missile to the target. Typically the missile is steered with a joystick, and its path is observed through a periscope-type...

    . Entered production in 1967

Operators

- SS 11 B 1, known as "Rannikko-ohjus 63", or "RO-63". - aboard RMN
RMN
RMN can mean:*Radio Mindanao Network* Registered Mental Nurse* Reconciling Ministries Network, a movement of United Methodist individuals, congregations, and other groups working for the full participation of all people in the United Methodist Church...

 Pendekar Class fast patrol boats (now retired) - aboard Army Alouette III and Navy SH-3/AB-212ASW helicopters - coastal defense against landing craft (Robot 52)

Please note that this list is not complete.

External links

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