Publication: defence THINK Issued: Date: 2006-02-13 Reporter: Leon Engelbrecht

SA, Brazil to Develop New Air-to-air Missile

 

Publication 
defence THINK!
Date 2006-02-13

Reporter

 Leon Engelbrecht

 

South Africa and Brazil have an in-principal (sic) agreement worth R300 million (about US52 million) to develop Denel's A Darter short-range air-to-air missile from a prototype to an operational system, Denel chief executive Shaun Liebenberg told DSD this morning. "It will be a good team effort between Denel, Brazil, the SA Air Force (SAAF) and the Department of Defence. It is not 100 percent signed off yet but is 80 to 90 percent there," he said, adding that Brazil had placed a formal commitment on the table. It will be signed in Brazil in there (sic) next few weeks.
 
The Brazilian daily, O Estado de Sao Paulo, reported at the weekend that the investment, and the purchase of nine second hand F5 Freedom Fighters from Saudi Arabia, which will cost a further R24 million, follows the passing of a law in 2004 authorising the air force to shoot down aircraft used by drug traffickers over its vast territory. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is currently in South Africa for the Progressive Governance Summit. The Engineering News publication's current issue adds that the A-Darter is being developed by Denel Aerospace Services (DAS -- previously known as Kentron). It must not be confused with the R-Darter missile, also a DAS product, and in service with the SAAF as the V4.
  
The publication added that the Brazilian investment was coming from the Brazilian Air Force's Department of Research and Development and was going to South Africa’s defence acquisition, disposal and research-and-development agency, Armscor, not to Denel directly. The investment was revealed in an extract of an "exemption from tendering" notice published in Brazil’s Official Daily of the Union -- equivalent to the Government Gazette in South Africa -- on January 27. Engineering News said it was not yet known what Brazilian institutions would be involved, but speculated it was likely they would include the air force, most likely through its Aerospace Technical Centre, and private-sector Brazilian missile company Mectron, responsible for Brazil’s MAA-1 Piranha short-range infrared homing AAM. Denel has already created a subsidiary, "Denel do Brasil", there, with its office in the city of São José dos Campos, which is the centre of Brazil’s aerospace industry.
  
The A-Darter is described as a highly-agile fifth-generation short-range AAM. It will use a highly-sensitive thermal-imaging seeker with a multimode countermeasures suite (making it difficult to confuse and distract); it has a long-drag wingless airframe, allowing greater range than usual in this category of AAM. It is also light in weight and can be carried on existing launch rails, developed for the US Sidewinder-series AAMs. These launch rails are ubiquitous in air forces that do not use Russian fighter aircraft. The A-Darter can be launched at targets outside the range of its thermal seeker, using its ‘lock-on after-launch’ mode. The AAM can be cued on to a target by its host aircraft’s radar, or, if the fighter is observing radar silence (that is, its radar is not radiating so as not to alert hostile radar-warning systems), targets can be acquired by the A-Darter’s own seeker. The seeker has large "look angles", and this, coupled with the missile’s great agility, allows "high off-boresight helmet-designated firing". Boresight is straight ahead of the fighter; this means that the pilot can look well to the left or right, up or down, fix a target in the sight projected onto the visor of his helmet, lock the missile seeker on to it, and fire it, even if his fighter is not pointing at the target aircraft. The A-Darter airframe has a length of 2980mm, a diameter of 166mm, a mass of 89kg and a "wingspan" (across its rear-mounted control fins) of 488mm.
  
Meanwhile, Brazilian defence media also believe that it is highly likely that Brazil will adopt the R-Darter beyond-visual-range AAM to meet its requirement for this category of missile to equip its modernised F-5M fighters. In addition, and in separate contracts, Brazil is spending US6,982,000 on acquiring "aeronautical material" from Armscor, and US300,000 on "services related to the validation of war systems" from Denel. The latter two contracts were concluded on December 28 and October 23, respectively.

With acknowledgements to Leon Engelbrecht and defence THINK!


Watch this space about were the ownership of this technology, partially paid by the South African taxpayer, eventually resides.