Conceived in 1962 and designed by British Aerospace, the Sea Wolf was originally developed as the replacement for the widely-fitted Sea Cat SAM system. Unfortunately, in the Guided Weapon System Mk 28 Mod 0 devised for the Royal Navy the weapons pack age proved so large that it could be fitted on warships only down to the size of 2,500 tons or so. In fact it was the room required to fit two complete manually-reloaded GWS Mk 25 systems with their attendant 30-round magazines and six-round launcher: that helped to finalize the dimension: and displacement of the 'TYPE 22 frigates in excess of the Sea Dart equipped Type 42 destroyers.

Sea Wolf ~s a fully automatic point defence system with radio command to line-of-sight guidance coupled with radar differential or low light TV tracking. The missile's maneuverability and speed allows it to engage small Mach 2 anti-ship missiles and aircraft targets under severe weather conditions and sea states down to low altitudes. During the Falklands war the Type 22 frigates HMS Brilliant and HMS Broadsword, together with the converted 'Leander' class frigate HMS Andromeda with only one launcher, used the missile operationally, one of the Type 22s acting as the close-range air-defence ship or 'goalkeeper' to the carriers. The first combat use was from the Brilliant on 12 May when the ship engaged a flight of four McDonnell Douglas A-9 Skyhawks, shooting down two and forcing a third to crash as it evaded a missile. The official list credits the Sea Wolf with five kills, although recent evidence now suggests it was only the three described above, plus a possible fourth. What actually came out of the war was that the system required a number of software upgrades to increase its reliability: on several occasions the computers associated with target-tracking broke lock because they had what was akin to a nervous breakdown trying to differentiate between targets flying close together.

The modifications culminated in a successful trial whereby a Sea Wolf engaged and destroyed a sea skimming MM.38 Exocet anti-ship missile.

Further to improve the missile's capabilities and range, a vertical-launch capability, first demonstrated in 1968 from HMS Loch Fada when it was considered to be of low priority, will be used aboard the new Type 23 'Daring' class frigates when they are eventually ordered. In the meantime several lightweight systems have also been developed, the GWS Mk 25 Mod 3 version being retrofitted in one form or another to various RN ship classes to increase their self-defence capability. Another variant which surprisingly the Royal Navy did not follow up was the conversion of the standard four-round Sea Cat launcher to take Sea Wolf container-launchers (together with the fitting of appropriate electronics and radars), Such a programme for the frigates of the Royal Navy would have undoubtedly resulted in a much higher kill rate for the close-range air defence systems aboard Royal Navy ship9 in the Falklands than was in fact obtained. To date no other nation has bought this unique missile system.

Specification Sea Wolf

TYPE: point-defence missile

 Dimensions - length 1.90 m (6 ft 2.8 in); diameter 0.30 m ( 11.8 in); span 0.45 m (lft5.7in)

Weights: total round 82 kg ( 180.4 lb); warhead ? HE-fragmentation

Performance: maximum speed Mach 2+  range 6.5 km (4.04 miles) or 10 km (6.2 miles) in vertical-launch form; altitude limits about 4.7-3050 m ( 15-10,000 ft)