Blowpipe (missile)

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 It was superseded by an interim design, Javelin, and the Starstreak missile.

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.

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. A British officer compared using the weapon to 'trying to shoot pheasants with a drainpipe.' 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 The poor performance led to it being withdrawn from UK service.

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].

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]

Another photo of the Canadian Blowpipe team in NBC suits

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)

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