The Royal Navy has carried out its first live firing of the Naval Strike Missile (NSM) from a British warship during Exercise Aegir 25 at the Andøya range in northern Norway.
The test was conducted alongside NATO allies Norway and Poland, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Frigate HMS Somerset launched the 400 kg missile, which is designed by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace. The NSM is an anti-ship and land-attack cruise missile that replaces the Royal Navy’s ageing Harpoon system currently fitted to Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers.
The missile has an operational range of more than 200 km, with later variants reaching beyond 300 km. It uses GPS-aided inertial navigation, a laser altimeter, terrain contour matching and an imaging infrared seeker for terminal guidance. The system weighs 400 kg with booster, carries a 120 kg titanium-cased blast and fragmentation warhead, and flies at sea-skimming altitude at speeds up to Mach 0.93.
Kongsberg states that the NSM is already in service with Norway, Poland, the United States, Germany and several other countries, with production continuing for new customers including the UK.
The United Kingdom is in the process of equipping its surface fleet with the Naval Strike Missile, with a total of 11 vessels scheduled to receive the system. The rollout covers ships drawn from both the Type 23 frigate class and the Type 45 destroyer class.
With so few frigates and destroyers in the fleet it seems more than stupid that we can’t equip all of them with NSM. The Anglo-French replacement is still years away so we are going to need these on T26 & T31 too.
Agree. Also the NSM can be fitted into Mk41 vls so that’s another bonus. I’d like to see the entirety of the frigate and destroyer fleet fitted for NSM too. It offers some useful punch to the RN.
Other options are LRASM and/ or a storm shadow derivative.
Purchasing just 11 NSM sets of 8 missiles each was really the bare minimum. It’s worth considering though that upto now no surface warships have engaged another with ship to ship missiles. Most combat has been air launched or submarine Vs surface ship. The NSMs range means a warship has to get relatively close to its enemy to launch it.
I think 11 is all of the T23s and T45s. Everything from here is likely to be vericle launch using the Mk 41 system.
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