Thales UK has won a £200m-plus support contract from the UK ministry of defence for its Starstreak close air defence system. The contract, which will be announced today, is for the Starstreak high velocity missile system, designed to counter threats from very high performance, low-flying aircraft.

Starstreak –High Velocity Missile

The HVM is a laser-guided missile.

Once fired, a secondary ignition accelerates the missile to a burn-out velocity of Mach 3.5. Following burn-out, the missile releases three tungsten alloy darts filled with high explosives. These three darts cause damage not only from their explosives but also from their kinetic energy.

The explosives within each dart are impact delayed exploding only after the darts are inside a target. This causes even more damage.

The operator 'paints' the target whilst looking through an aiming unit.

The Starstreak missile has unique advantages as compared with infrared directed, radar guided, and radio control MCLOS/SACLOS missiles. It cannot be blocked by plain flares (infrared countermeasures - IRCMs) or by radar / radio countermeasures.

Theoretically, the AN/ALQ-144 or AN/ALQ-157 systems used for helicopter defence, will also not be able to countermeasure the Starstreak High Velocity Missile.

The high velocity of the device decreases the time for successful employment of any probable countermeasure, such as the beam tactic or lighting the control laser origin with sight destructive combat zone laser.

Finally, the direction-indicating laser has a small energy rank, which renders recognition and, thus deployment of countermeasures, more complicated for a laser detection receiver device.

The Starstreak HVM system comes in several configurations:

    * A self-propelled launcher, typically a tracked APC

    * A three round light weight launcher

    * A man portable launcher.

The HVM has also been shown to have limited effect against lightly-armoured ground targets such as APCs.