Royal Navy

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Work underway to install CAMM silo on Royal Navy Type 45 Destroyer

Work is now underway to add a new vertical launch silo to the first Royal Navy Type 45 air defence destroyer to receive the MBDA Common Anti-air Missile (CAMM) as part of the ships’ Sea Viper anti-air guided weapon system.
Richard Scott 11 Dec 2024

Pictures taken of HMS Defender in Portsmouth’s 3 Basin on the evening of 6 December show tentage erected over the area where the CAMM missile canisters will be housed. Defender, which is mid-way through a major propulsion upgrade and refit package, had been moved from 14 Dock to 3 Basin’s 8 berth on the morning of 4 December.

MBDA UK was in March 2021 awarded a Demonstration and Manufacture contract for the Sea Viper-CAMM (SV-CAMM) implementation by Defence Equipment and Support. The CAMM missile already forms part of the GWS 35 Sea Ceptor local-area anti-air guided weapon system fitted to the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates, and slated for the new Type 26 and Type 31 frigates.

The SV-CAMM upgrade will allow the Type 45 to maintain a high degree of commonality and re-use with the Sea Ceptor systems installed on Royal Navy frigates, and exploit the UK’s existing CAMM missile stockpile. Functioning as a complement to the medium-range Aster 30 missile, CAMM will replace the current Aster 15 short-range missile in the Sea Viper system to provide inner layer anti-air defence and also offer a capability against fast inshore attack craft.

As this photograph of Defender shows, the new 24-missile silo for CAMM is being installed in the deck area forward of the existing 48-cell SYLVER vertical launcher silo. As well as increasing overall missile capacity by 50%, the dedicated CAMM silo means that all SYLVER launch cells on the Type 45 can now be used solely for longer-range Aster 30 family missiles.

The current Sea Viper command and control system will also receive a technology upgrade. As well as an uplift in processing power, the existing Threat Evaluation and Weapon Assignment software functionality will be adapted so that the system can optimise the engagement plan for the specific threat scenario.

Defender is scheduled to complete its upgrade before the end of 2026. All six ships of the class are planned to have received the SV-CAMM installation by the end of 2032.

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/20 ... destroyer/