Canadian 129th Anti-Aircraft Defense Battery missile team with Blowpipe during NATO exercise Cornet Phaser. The men are wearing nuclear, biological and chemical protective gear.

Blowpipe is a man-portable surface-to-air missile which was in use with the British Army and Royal Marines from 1968. It was superseded by an interim design, Javelin, and the Starstreak missile. Image File history File links Blowpipe_missile_2. ... Image File history File links Blowpipe_missile_2. ... The NATO flag NATO 2002 Summit in Prague The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), sometimes called North Atlantic Alliance, Atlantic Alliance or the Western Alliance, is an international organisation for defence collaboration established in 1949, in support of the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington, D.C., on April 4... A surface-to-air missile (SAM) is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft. ... The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ... The Corps of Royal Marines, usually just known as the Royal Marines (RM), are the United Kingdoms amphibious forces and a core component of the countrys Rapid Deployment Force. ... A triple Javelin missile launcher Javelin is a British man-portable surface-to-air missile, used by the British Army and Canadian Army. ... Starstreak is a British short range surface-to-air missile, also known as Starstreak HVM where HVM stands for High Velocity Missile. ...

The missile is a single round in a storage cylinder. The controller unit is clipped to it and the missile is fired from the operators shoulder. For compact storage, the rear fins of the missile are housed at the front of the storage cylinder - the missile is steered by the front fins. When the missile is fired it moves forward through the rear fin assembly which locks to the rear of the body. The missile is powered by a short duration rocket to launch then by a main rocket. Guidance is by a small thumb joystick - the operator aided by a flare in the tail of the missile has to guide it to the target. Detonation is either by proximity or contact fuse. The controller can then be removed from the empty missile container and fitted to a new round.

Blowpipe was replaced by Javelin, which is of a very similar design but improved in performance and with a semi-automatic guidance system - the operator now controls the missile by keeping the target in the sight crosswires and the unit steers the missile to the sight.

Blowpipe was developed as a SAM for submarines, fitted into a mast that could be raised from the submarines conning tower under the name Submarine Launched Airflight Missile trialled on HMS Aeneas (P427) in the 1970s. HMS Aeneas (P427), named after the hero Aeneas from Greek mythology, was an Amphion-class submarine of the Royal Navy, built by Cammell Laird and launched 9 October 1945. ...

Combat performance

Blowpipe was used by both sides during the Falklands War in 1982. With the targets being fast flying aircraft, flying low and using the ground to hide their approach the Blowpipe had about 20 seconds to spot the target, align the unit and fire. The official report stated that of the 95 missiles fired, only 9 managed to destroy their targets and all of these were slow flying planes and helicopters [1]. A later report indicated that only 1 kill could be attributed to Blowpipe. The poor performance led to it being withdrawn from UK service. The Falklands War or the Malvinas War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas), was an armed conflict between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands (also known in Spanish as the Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, between March and June of 1982. ...

In 1986 some of the mothballed units where sent clandestinely to equip the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan [2]. The system again proved ineffective [3], largely due to the manual control line of sight guidance system which relies on the operator to guide the missile from launch to impact. With Blowpipe ineffective, a more effective system had to be found. While Blowpipe was available on the international arms market and therefore its origins were open to speculation, the provision of the U.S. Stinger missile which was restricted meant that there had to be more open acknowledgment of western support for the Mujahideen. Blowpipe missile systems are still being found in weapon caches as recently as June 2003 in Afghanistan [4] [5]. Mujahideen (Arabic: , also transliterated as mujāhidīn, mujahedeen, mujahedin, mujahidin, mujaheddin, etc. ... MCLOS (short for Manual Command to Line of Sight) is a first-generation method for guiding guided missiles. ... Two soldiers preparing to fire a shoulder-mounted Stinger missile launcher A Stinger System: Launcher, Missile and Battery The FIM-92 Stinger is a man portable infra-red homing surface-to-air missile developed in the United States and used by all the US armed services, with whom it entered...

The Canadian military took Blowpipe from storage to give some protection to their naval contribution to the 1991 Gulf war, however sheer age had affected the weapon and 9 out of 27 missiles tested mis-fired in some way. [6] 1991 (MCMXCI) is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... C Company, 1st Battalion, The Staffordshire Regiment, 1st UK Armoured Division The 1991 Gulf War was a conflict between Iraq and a coalition force of approximately 30 nations mandated by the United Nations and led by the United States. ...

Another photo of the Canadian Blowpipe team in NBC suits

Image File history File links Blowpipe_missile_1. ... Image File history File links Blowpipe_missile_1. ...

General characteristics

• Length: 1.35 m
• Diameter: 76 mm
• Wingspan: 274 mm
• Weight
  • Missile: 11 kg
  • Complete system: 22 kg
• Warhead: 2.2 kg shaped charge
• Range: 500 m to 3.5 km
• Speed: Mach 1.5 (510 m/s)

A shaped charge is an explosive charge shaped to focus the effect of the released energy. ...

Users

• United Kingdom (285 launchers)
• Ecuador (220 launchers)
• Canada (111 launchers)
• Portugal (57 launchers)
• Nigeria (48 launchers)
• United Arab Emirates (about 20 launchers)
• Malawi (12 launchers)
• Qatar
• Argentina
• Chile
• Thailand
• Oman

References

• Falklands Air War, Chris Hobson, ISBN 1857801261

See also