If you enjoy the forum please consider supporting it by signing up for a NES Membership The benefits pay for the membership many times over.
Be sure to enter the NES/MFS February Giveaway ***Canik TP9SF Elite***
during the Falkland Islands war, the Brits defended their ships from Exocet missles by having helicopters hover between the incoming weapon and the ship. The missle would lock on the chopper, which would then go vertical....quickly....casuing the missle to rise up over the ship, and presumably, below the whirlybird.
I didn't see any explosion, so either they were testing the delivery system without the warhead or it was a kinetic round.I'm guessing they didn't want to damage the ship and had it aimed for the shipping container? If they didn't so much for it being "anti ship"
I didn't see any explosion, so either they were testing the delivery system without the warhead or it was a kinetic round.
actually, the helicopter would be hovering alongside the ship in order to present a single, larger target to the Exocet's radar seeker. The seeker would not be able to resolve two individual targets and would go for the center of the radar return, thus causing the missile to pass between the helicopter and the ship.
For various reasons (specular reflection, ducting, Kalman filter tracking, shadowing, etc) it is around 10x easier to hit something 40 feet in the air than something 2 feet above the sea level.^ It was a test, thats where they were aiming......
either way--as a chopper pilot you still must have balls of steel to willingly put yourself between the ship and the missile like that.