Missile Loadouts: British Air Warfare Ships (1962-2019)

The County-class

Unlike most navies, the Royal Navy's first guided missile ships were not conversions of existing ships. Instead, they were the eight purpose-built County-class destroyers, which entered service beginning in 1962. Measuring 158 meters in length, these ships were much larger than the proceeding 120-meter Daring-class gun destroyers and were commonly referred to as "DLG" after the American hull code for large missile ships like the contemporary Farragut-class frigates.

Further, rather than relying on American missiles as was done by most NATO navies, the British chose to build the County-class around the domestic Sea Slug surface-to-air missile - a weapon that unfortunately lived up to its underwhelming name. A beam riding missile with a range of 25 kilometers and a top speed of Mach 1.5 (many sources state Sea Slug was subsonic, this is incorrect and likely a misreading of the fact that it could only engage subsonic targets), Sea Slug was comparable to the first versions of the American Terrier. However, by the time the County-class entered service, Terrier was a decade old and the latest versions had semi-active radar homing and a range of 75 kilometers. Perhaps the only noteworthy aspect of Sea Slug was its bizarre construction, consisting of four solid-fuel boosters wrapped around the nose of the main stage.

The missile armament of the first two County-class destroyers consisted of a single twin-rail Sea Slug launcher aft, fed by a horizontal magazine holding 24 weapons that extended nearly the length of the ship. Because of Sea Slug's limited effectiveness against low-altitude targets, each ship was also outfitted with two amidships launchers for the short-ranged Sea Cat surface-to-air missile. However, this radio-command guidance missile was even more primitive than Sea Slug, with a range of around 5 kilometers and top speed of just Mach 0.8, making it truly a last resort. Each Sea Cat launcher held a total of 4 missiles, but the command system was integrated with the launcher so it could only engage a single target at a time. As with most missiles of this weight class, an unknown number of reloads were carried.

Devonshire in 1962: 24x Sea Slug, 8x Sea Cat

Beginning with the third ship of the class (Kent), the Sea Slug magazine was redesigned to accomodate 40 weapons, by storing 24 of the missiles in a partially disassembled state.

Kent in 1963: 40x Sea Slug, 8x Sea Cat

The final four ships of the class were commissioned somewhat later (1966-1970) and are known as the Batch 2. In addition to electronics upgrades, they were outfitted for the improved Sea Slug Mk 2, which had a range of 35 kilometers and a top speed of Mach 2.

Beginning with Norfolk in 1974, the Batch 2 ships were further upgraded when their superfiring 4.5" mounts were replaced with four forward-firing box-launchers for Exocet MM38 antiship missiles. However, these early Exocet's were rockets rather than cruise missiles and had a maximum range of only 40 kilometers.

Norfolk in 1974: 4x Exocet, 40x Sea Slug, 8x Sea Cat

The Batch 1 County-class ships were never upgraded with Sea Slug Mk 2 or Exocet and were retired between 1976 and 1981 after an average service life of just 16 years, with one (London) being sold to Pakistan where she served until 1993. The Batch 2 ships did not last much longer and were decommissioned and sold to Chile between 1981 and 1987 after serving an average of 18 years. In contrast, the American Farragut-class served an average of 30 years, while the French Suffren-class lasted an average of 35 years. The last two County-class destroyers in Chilean service were finally retired in 2006, having long since lost their obsolete Sea Slug missiles.

Type 82 Bristol-class

The successor for the County-class was to be the Type 82 Bristol-class. Although slightly shorter than the County-class at 154 meters, the Type 82 actually had a higher displacement because of its wider beam and deeper draft. Originally 8 ships were planned, but the cancellation of the CVA-01 aircraft carrier program meant that large fleet escorts were no longer desired and only a single Type 82 was actually built.

Commissioned in 1973, Bristol was armed with the new Sea Dart missile. A clean-sheet design, Sea Dart was a semi-active radar homing ramjet with a range of 75 kilometers and a speed of Mach 3.5 - comparable performance to the much larger American SM-1ER. However, magazine capacity remained constant at 40 missiles (although they were now all stored fully assembled).

Contributing to the low Sea Dart capacity was that Bristol was also equipped with a 24-round magazine for the Ikara antisubmarine missile. Fired from a recessed single-arm launcher forward, this Australian weapon could carry a standard 12.75" antisubmarine torpedo some 20 kilometers.

Bristol in 1973: 24x Ikara, 40x Sea Dart

From 1984-1986 Bristol was modified to serve as a training ship, losing her Ikara system in the process. Bristol was ultimately decommissioned in 1991 after just 18 years in service, of which only 11 years was as a frontline warship. However, she continues to operate to this day as a permanently-moored training facility in Portsmouth.

Bristol in 1986: 40x Sea Dart

With the cancellation of the Type 82 after only a single hull, the Royal Navy was in desperate need of a new class of air warfare ships. But the focus now shifted from a large cruiser-size vessel to the bare minimum hull that could fit Sea Dart. The result was the Type 42 Sheffield-class destroyer, a 125-meter ship that was actually smaller than the 136-meter Perry-class frigates then being built by the United States.

Type 42 Sheffield-class

Because of its limited size, the Type 42 had only a small 22-missile magazine for its forward-mounted twin-rail Sea Dart launcher and also lacked any form of secondary missile battery. The first of the fourteen British Type 42 destroyers was commissioned in 1975 (two additional ships were built for Argentina) and the last (Edinburgh) joined the fleet a decade later in 1985. The final 4 ships of the class are known as the Batch 3 (Batch 2 introduced only minor improvements) and were built to a heavily modified design that was 140 meters in length and half a meter wider in beam. However, this extra space was used to rectify numerous deficiencies stemming from the cramped nature of the class rather than to increase its armament.

Sheffield in 1975: 22x Sea Dart

While two Type 42 destroyers (Sheffield and Coventry) were sunk during the Falklands War in 1982, the remaining twelve ships served until being decommissioned between 1999 and 2013. With an average service life of 27 years (not counting the two ships lost in action), the Type 42 proved far more successful than its much larger predecessors.

Type 45 Daring-class

When it came time to begin replacing the Type 42, the Royal Navy was not interested in another bare-bones design. Further, the construction of the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers meant that need for a large fleet escort had reappeared. These requirements led to the six new Type 45 Daring-class destroyers, which entered service from 2009 to 2013 and measured 152 meters in length.

The armament of these powerful ships consists of a forward 48-cell Sylver A50 vertical launch system for the all-new Sea Viper missile. Jointly developed with France and Italy and more commonly known as Aster, there are two versions of this weapon differing only in the size of the booster stage. Aster 30 has a range of 120 kilometers and a speed of Mach 4, while Aster 15 has a range of 30 kilometers and a speed of Mach 3. Guidance is active radar homing, which eliminates the need for illuminators and vastly improves performance against saturation attacks.

It is commonly stated that, like the French Horizon-class destroyers, each Type 45 carries 32 Aster 30 and 16 Aster 15. However, this may not actually be the case as, unlike with the French ships, I have been unable to uncover any evidence for this claim and all pictures and press releases I have found show only Aster 30.

Daring in 2009: 32x Aster 30, 16x Aster 15

Beginning in 2015, four of the Type 45 destroyers were retrofitted with canister launchers for eight Harpoon antiship missiles. These launchers and missiles were taken from decommissioned Type 22 frigates and mounted forward, aft of the VLS. These missiles were originally supposed to be retired in 2018 and it is unclear how much more service life they have.

Duncan in 2015: 8x Harpoon, 32x Aster 30, 16x Aster 15

What stands out the most from this history is that despite having only built four classes of air warfare ships, the Royal Navy has fielded three entirely different surface-to-air missile systems. This is in stark contrast to the United States Navy, which has stuck with the same Terrier/Tartar/Standard family since the 1950's. And unlike the Soviet Navy, which also fielded numerous different missiles, the Royal Navy's weapons were all purpose-built rather than leveraging weapons already developed for use ashore.

Another point of note is just how one-dimensional the armaments were. With the exception of Bristol, all of these ships entered service with nothing but surface-to-air missiles. Further, the antiship missile retrofits were only applied to 8 out of 29 hulls and were not even universal on the classes that received them.

However, notwithstanding these choices, the Royal Navy undeniably deserves respect for maintaining robust and independent construction of air warfare ships despite lacking the budget of a superpower.