A Wildcat Helicopter has conducted a single successful test-firing of the Sea Venom missile at a barge anchored off the Aberporth Range in Wales.
This trail marks a major step forward in the much-delayed integration of this important capability onto the Wildcat. Sea Venom has been in development since the late 1990s as the replacement for Sea Skua light anti-ship missile which was retired in 2017. It was supposed to go into service in 2023 but instead this capability has been gapped for almost a decade with FOC due in 2026.
Commenting on the test, Lt Cdr Robin Kenchingtono of 744 Naval Air (test and evaluation) Squadron, said: “Every aspect of the firing worked well – from the ease-of-use in-cockpit for crews, through the performance of the missile in flight, right up to the accuracy on the target”. The target consisted of three containers mounted on a barge. Each container wall had individually controlled heating elements to accurately simulate the heat signature of a typical target. The trial was a joint effort by Leonardo UK, MBDA, QinetiQ and the MoD.

Sea Venom is a high-subsonic, light anti-ship missile with a range of more than 20km and designed to counter small combatants up to the size of corvettes or small frigates. It carries a 30 kg semi-armour piercing fragmentation warhead optimised for attacking ships but can be used to attack small land targets. It was specifically designed for use in complex littoral environments. It offers operator-in-the-loop, monitor-and-control facility with in-flight retargeting, final aim point correction and refinement or safe abort options. A two-way data link provides real-time video imagery back to the cockpit.
The Infra-Red seeker head has advanced image processing to distinguish between targets and avoid decoys. The weapon is drop-launched and the booster motor does not fire until fully separated from the aircraft. The Wildcat can quickly turn away from the target after launch keeping it away from SAM engagement envelopes.
Should imagine it the helicopter won’t get within rage of it’s target before it’s picked up on radar and shot down ,unless it’s target is unarmed ,
i think it will be a quick pop up to acquire target fire then back down.
I think you missed what targets this is aimed at. Corvette, landing craft, fast attack boats, even surfaced subs, and then land targets like buildings, soft skinned vehicles, etc.
Anything with anti-air missile defences will get a Naval Strike Missile or the new Perseus missile or F-35 launched Spear.
The Gulf Wars showed how useful this light strike capability for defence against small-medium opponents, where big expensive missiles are overkill.
It’s worth checking which targets these are likely to deploy against, and what air defence they are carrying, bearing in mind the 20 km (public) engagement range of Sea Venom:
Russian frigates and destroyers over 800 Te carry maritime versions of the Tor system, as do some of their smaller corvettes by strapping the normal land based ones onto their helidecks. These AD missiles max out at 15 km, before we even begin to consider what their radar detection capabilities are- which Ukraine seems to be showing are less than feared. That basically covers any sailing naval vessel that would be a legitimate target in Russia’s fleet- whether it’s to kill a corvette or mission kill a frigate. The few larger vessels like cruisers carry S300 missiles I believe, but we’d not be launching Wildcat + Sea Venom against those.
China, I don’t know, but they’re historically more or less in line with Russian tech- so I wouldn’t expect anything hugely different in terms of capability. The big difference I suppose is that their destroyers and frigates are getting bigger, so could take bigger and longer range AD systems. But that then takes them out of the target bracket of Wildcat + Sea Venom, so again less of an issue.
Honestly, I think it fits the bill.
Think of China and its ‘Maritime Militia’ and Coastguard , theres 100s of these in the littoral waters and islands of SE Asia
Too big a sweeping statement to make without understanding what the targets will be, I would think this capability (in addition to Stingray and Martlet) gives some very useful options against a wide range of smaller targets.
A question for the informed among us: if this is designed to attack up to small frigates (my assumption is withone missile), could it not just fire multiple missiles at larger ships?
Larger warships are likely to have the defence systems to attack the Wildcat before it is within SV launch paramerers.
Also, any reasonably large tasks group with a frigate or more is likely to have its own helicopters or even AWACS airborne and so be able to spot the wildcat over the horizon.
In that case some sort of very slow carrier battle might ensue, with air to air wildcats facing off and protecting the anti ship fitted ones.
Good fun!
I don’t know of any modern naval SAM today of less than 25-30km range
116 RAM and possibly VL Mica are less than 25km range if the public info is to be believed .
Yea possibly those.
Pantsir M and the maritime Tor have lower range than 25km…
You could ripple up to four Skua at a target. They were Semi active homers so you needed to keep the target lit up by the radar. That would have set off any ESM detection straight away irrespective of a radar contact. No reason to think you cannot ripple venom
Venom has IIR homing so no transmissions required. You use the helos own ESM to detect targets or the 360 coverage radar in search mode. ID the target using the Thermal imager /TV camera PID. You can then shoot and the target will need to detect the incoming via radar. Its small fast and ill be really low so detection will be difficult. You could shoot on just an ESM racket bearing line and use the missile to look and find the target sending the ID back via datalink. You could then decide to either attack or not from that info.
Good stuff, been hoping to see some news of development on the programme for ages!
One thing, and I know it’s a pipe dream, but anyway: If this is a fall-away weapon, and seems to have lock-on-after launch capability, surely this could be deployed from F-35B if integrated. Obviously, higher speed dynamics would have to be tested etc. but if you can drop JDAM, Paveway, Spear, etc. from the bays then I don’t see why you couldn’t drop Sea Venom. From a higher speed, higher flying platform, range would be significantly more than 20 km- and the size of warhead and speed of the missile makes (in my opinion) a good combination with the Spear 3.
I fully realise that the cost and time involved to integrate would be better spent on getting JSM, but just an observation that it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world- especially if MBDA came up with a Sea Venom ER.
The annoying thing about Sea Venom for F35 is that it is exactly the wrong length (2.5m).
That means that you can’t fit two lengthways along the weapon bay (that needs max 1.8/2m) and you don’t use enough of the available space to make it worthwhile, carrying only one SV to 8 Spear.
If a longer variant were made, like that JASSM-XR, it might be worth it, but with those wings you will only ever get 2 in an F35 plus Meteor/AMRAAM.
JSM externally seems the best option for maxing out the F35 as at standoff range the drop in stealth won’t matter as much.
JSM/NSM-XR, there’s a thought. I suppose it would compete with FC/ASW. Oh well.
Ah, thanks- I didn’t know how the dimensions matched up to tell the truth, that’s frustrating…
I would venture that the ratio might be 1:4 on Sea Venom to Spear, as I thought Spear was 4 per side? Regardless, you’d have to argue hard to say that the speed of SV makes up for the multiple warheads/ potential directions of attack that you get from 4 Spear. I’d be interested to know how much range you’d get from a ~4 m long SV that takes up the whole side of the F-35B bay, if you’re not increasing warhead size (don’t see much reason to, as 30 kg is going to mission-kill anything we’re likely to be shooting at); if it’s 25 km now, an extra 1.2 m of rocket motor would, I expect, increase that quite considerably. Out beyond 60 km even, maybe? That may very well be worth getting, especially as it has a secondary land attack capability.
Agreed that if we’re only going external carriage then well go JSM for the stealth aspect, or maybe FC/ASW when that finally comes along. I doubt very much that will fit internally!
To be honest a far better idea would be to use the Spear derived LPS and integrate that to F-35. You’d get 2 per bay, 300km range and an incredibly easy integration with a similar sized warhead to Sea Venom.
Sorry to sound like a stuck record, but where does the 300km number come from?
As far as I can tell MBDA haven’t marketed their new design at all.
Is that the one that TD has on his webpage? The one called CAsMM as a naval concept? I very much like the idea- especially if it can be used by all branches of the military in VLS, aircraft, and M270. I’ve not seen any info on the form factor though, and I thought it was literally just a spear with a booster like GL-SDB is an SDB with a booster?
Or am I completely barking up the wrong tree…?
LPS is a new MBDA design for the eponymous Army requirement. The idea is to hit moving targets at a range of 80-150km from an M270 canister.
The design is essentially an extra long Spear with a bigger warhead and fuel due to the extra length, a booster to get off the ground and shorter wings to fit in a tube footprint while folded.
Rudeboy knows much more than I do but it seems to have much longer range than is necessary for the requirement.
Same width as Spear so 2 side by side in an F35.
The important thing is that if IR seeker can target specific parts of a warship via image recognition.
As with most things in the RN looks fine fie what it is. But not in service, a decade late few ships capable of actually going to sea and carrying it anyway.
A single Wildcat equipped with either Martlet, Stingray or Sea Venom makes for a decent offensive and defensive capability to my mind. This is a great option especially for the Rivers giving them real punch.
Except the B2 Rivers don’t have a hangar. They can refuel and maybe rearm a helicopter, but not operate one long term.
I don’t disagree with that but I do see this as a very worthwhile addition/capability.
I find that strange, even more since RN operates in Atlantic which is not as friendly as Mediterranean.
But the B2 Rivers are mostly patrolling in warmer waters and doing a cracking job by all accounts. Having the ability to operate Helicopters as and when is a bonus.
Yes, it’s strange.
There are some conspiracy theorists who suggest there was no hangar to ensure the Navy wouldn’t be criticised for not deploying a helicopter, which would have made operations more expensive. Others have said it was to forestall the Treasury reducing T26 numbers (which they did anyway). I rarely accept conspiracy theories. In general, if it’s a choice of conspiracy or cock-up, I’ll believe in cock-up.
Given the speed that the first three had to be ordered to avoid TOBA penalties and the reluctance of the Navy to accept an OPV at all, did the Navy have the time and the will for proper feedback on ships they didn’t care about? I think they did. There was an eight month gap between the agreement in principle to buy the ships (and the announcement of cost) and the detailed contract agreement the following year. There was a long list of design upgrades “to meet the requirements of the Royal Navy”. We can also point to Tamar and Spey which were ordered a couple of years later which had further design changes, but still no hangars. So I think that if the RN had wanted hangars there was time. Were all the other changes so great that they couldn’t afford a hangar as well? Possible, I suppose.
There has been an argument made that the RB2s are more flexible without a hangar as it gives more deck space. I’m not all that convinced by this one either. I ask myself why might you want a bespoke Flight Deck Officer’s control centre if you aren’t going to have a hangar? Forward positioning RB2s for refuelling helicopters during a war? Transporting marines to/from land?
It’s all very mysterious and the answer is probably all very mundane. Damned if I can think of it.