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The development of the Garfish/Broadsword missile - a history.

Introduction.

The story behind the development of the Garfish/Broadsword missile is a tale of one of the most protracted and expensive military programmes in British military history, more so than even the Eurofighter Typhoon.

That the system was fielded at all, and in such numbers is something of a miracle, and those who were involved in the development and procurement side must be praised for their persistence and dedication amidst much opposition.

Was is clear, however, is that the Garfish/Broadsword programme will be the last of its kind; any future missile project will be as part of a multinational consortium, though as the Eurofighter project has demonstrated, they are not immune from the sort of cost overruns that dogged Garfish/Broadsword.

Garfish/Broadsword also had an effect on the rest of the defence budget. It was almost certainly responsible for the plans to replace the army's Saxon APCs and the RAF's last remaining Canberras being deferred and eventually cancelled all together. Moreover who knows how many smaller promising defence programmes never saw the light of day because of Garfish/Broadsword?

Early history.

The history of Garfish/Broadsword can be traced back to the early 1980s when the Royal Navy began to seriously think about replacing the Sea Dart missile, which equipped its Type 42 destroyers and the one-off Type 82 destroyer, HMS Bristol.

Initially the navy had intended to introduce an improved Sea Dart, the Mark II, as part of the Type 43/Type 44 destroyer programme. However computer studies suggested that while the Sea Dart Mark II was an improvement over the original system, it was still inadequate for the tasks it would be asked to perform.

The DNC at the time, the well-known David K. Brown, led the team that designed the T43, and has since suggested that the death of Sea Dart Mark II, as part of the notorious Nott Defence Review, was one of the few correct decisions of that review.

His team did briefly look at procuring Aegis, presumably with the US Standard SM2 missile, fitted to the larger Type 43 design, but it was ruled out as being too expensive (rather ironic in the end).

The decision taken by the Nott review, while undoubtedly the correct one, left the Royal Navy without a future SAM system to replace Sea Dart, which, even with the upgrades added to the system after the experience of the Falklands War, was beginning to look a bit long in the tooth.

Fortunately in Sea Wolf the navy had an excellent point-defence missile, amongst the best in its class. However, without an effective area air defence missile even the best point defence system would face being overwhelmed in any saturation attack by anti-ship missiles, the very threat that the Royal Navy would face if war broke out with the Soviet Union.

Realising the situation it was in the Royal Navy began to cast envious eyes over the American Aegis/SM-2 combination, and the top brass of the era were to be again disappointed when, despite American offers to sell Britain the system, it was rejected for a second time, again due to the high cost of the system.

Instead of procuring the American system a number of low cost, low risk studies were begun at the behest of the MoD (Navy) by both BAe Dynamics and Shorts of Belfast. While none of these projects bore fruit, they were not entirely wasted, as the upper stage of the eventual Garfish/Broadsword missile was remarkably similar to the missile design produced by BAe Dynamics.

Almost at the same time the Royal Air Force began to think about the replacement of the Bloodhound missile.

In its day the Bloodhound Mk. II missile had been a formidable system, and even in the 1980s and 1990s the upgraded system was one that had to be accorded respect by any aircraft attempting to penetrate the United Kingdom Air Defence Region.

However, like Sea Dart, Bloodhound had reached the end of its development potential, and without replacement would soon be obsolete. Moreover, despite the Mk. II in theory being airportable, it was in practise a fixed system, hence vulnerable to attack, which was something the RAF wished to rectify with its replacement.

When the RAF began to seriously think about a Bloodhound replacement they initially looked at the American Patriot missile (rather like the navy had done with Standard), and indeed BAe marketed the missile to the RAF, however many missile experts pointed out that Patriot had a shorter range than Bloodhound and was essentially a point defence system, a requirement that the existing excellent Rapier system already covered.

In this situation the MoD (RAF) fell back on that old British standard for such situations - it launched a competitive tendering exercise for the new Medium Ranged Surface to Air Missile, or MSAM.

The competitors for this requirement were as follows: the GEC-Marconi/Eurosam SAMP/T (1), the Siemens Plessey/Hughes/NFT Advanced SAM (based on the Norwegian NASAMS project), and the Raytheon/BAe mix of Patriot with additional Rapier 2000 (what would become Field Standard C) as 'gap-fillers'.

None of these proposals really met the RAF's requirements, although all three companies would become involved with Garfish/Broadsword, especially once the BAe/Matra joint venture consortium, MBDA, was formed in the mid 1990s, so the only solution was a national project, and that was where some of the trouble started.

Two becomes one - the projects merge.

While all of the proposals to replace Sea Dart and Bloodhound had either been rejected on cost grounds, or because they did not meet the requirements, they did influence the thinking of the MoD's Procurement Executive.

The 'Men from the Ministry' had noted that the French Eurosam Aster was being developed both as a naval and land-based SAM system, which got them thinking. Surely a combined programme to replace both Sea Dart and Bloodhound was the best way forward?

To say that the admirals and the air marshals were outraged would be an understatement, both services were convinced that bringing in the other would lead to a bastardised system that would suit neither of them.

In theory a joint project would save a great deal of time and money, and would eliminate much duplicated effort. However the eventual high cost of Garfish/Broadsword means that this theory cannot really be put to the test, although it is likely that two separate systems would have been equally expensive and would have been vulnerable to cancellation.

Fortunately since in the main the two teams working on the preliminaries of both projects had been drawn from BAe Dynamics there was none of the acrimony often associated with previous 'shotgun weddings' imposed by government on the defence industry.

It was also at this time that the now well-known missile designer, Dr. Arthur Pollard, became the chief designer for the project.

Designing the beast - Garfish/Broadsword takes shape.

Not many people know that the Austin Mini car and the MBDA Garfish/Broadsword missile share one thing in common - their designers both sketched out the preliminary design while in a café talking to a colleague.

While Sir Alec Issigonis sketched out his design on a tablecloth, Dr. Pollard was rather more considerate to the café, drawing his design on a note pad. (2)

The 'beast', as the Garfish/Broadsword rapidly became known, emerged as a very thorough design, combining a ramjet motor for sustained high speed of over Mach.5, with Thrust Vectoring Control and 'pif-paf' side thrusters for a high degree of manoeuvrability.

It was this 'belt and braces' thorough design that was to lead both to the 'beast' being arguably the best missile in its class and to the high costs involved in the programme.

Integrating the various parts components of the missile was no easy task, and on occasion this process could go spectacularly wrong, the destruction of an entire TEL during test firing on the South Uist missile range being one of the most famous incidents, which was believed to been caused by a fault in the solid rocket booster.

The difficulties involved in integrating the various parts into a whole were certainly responsible for the cost overruns in the programme and for the project being several years behind schedule.

The project under threat.

By 1996 the worst technical problems of the project were behind it, both the land based and the naval version of the missile system had both shown excellent reliability and performance. However the project now faced its biggest threat - cancellation.
The first threat to the missile came from the French half of the new MBDA consortium, who saw the 'Garfish/Broadsword' as a threat to its own Aster series. The successful development of the British missile could be a serious threat to Aster's export potential (though the British had no intention of exporting such an advanced missile, at least initially), so Matra began to put serious pressure on BAe Dynamics to cancel the project, or at least merge it with Aster 45.
The BAe team fought hard to demonstrate that their missile was better than the Aster 45 and that it better met the RAF and Royal Navy's requirements than the French missile.
Fortunately for the two British services the British side of the consortium were able to keep the project alive with support from the Ministry of Defence, who indicated that they were not interested in Aster 30 and 45.

Rather ironically given the strong support from one government department the second major threat to the programme came from another government, the Treasury.
As was traditional for the Treasury it was rather averse to spending money. Chancellors tended to see their role as gathering as much tax revenue as possible, while spending as little of it as possible.
The high costs of the 'Garfish/Broadsword' greatly offended the Treasury's sensibilities; oh they could happily sustain one or two expensive military project, but as far as they were concerned this missile programme was the straw that broke the camels back.
The Treasury began a concerted programme to have 'Garfish/Broadsword' cancelled, arguing that it was too expensive for the defence budget to sustain and that while the navy version, 'Garfish', could just possibly be justified as it was a central part of the new Type 45 destroyers, there was no real requirement for the RAF version, 'Broadsword'. They pressed for the RAF side of the programme to be cancelled and a cheaper missile procured to fulfil the requirement.

For one the MoD stuck to its guns, the RAF employing all of its resources to promote 'Broadsword', as did the MBDA team, who argued that both versions were essential to the development of the programme.
With such concerted opposition the Treasury uncharacteristically gave in, and the funding for the programme was assured.

Into service.

With its technical problems behind it and the threat of cancellation lifted development of 'Garfish/Broadsword' missile moved ahead rapidly.
With the long lead times of naval vessels the RAF's version was to enter service first, the first TELs, phased array radars, control vans being delivered to A Flight, 85 Squadron RAF, replacing its ageing 'Bloodhound' SAM missiles in March of 1998.
A Flight would serve as the Royal Air Force's Operational Evaluation Unit, refining tactics and procedures. While the 'Broadsword' did suffer the sort of initial minor problems associated with the introduction of all complex military systems, the RAF considered its introduction to be one of the most in the service's history.
Between March 1998 and July 2003 the RAF brought the 'Broadsword' missile into full service; it eventually equipped six flights (A-F) of 85 Squadron.
However the original plan had been for two squadrons each made up of four flights, but the high cost of the programme meant that this plan was scaled back to a single six flight squadron, two flights and an HQ Flight being dropped from plans.

The navy's 'Garfish' missile entered service two months later than the RAF's missile when the first Type 45, HMS Daring, commissioned. As with 'Broadsword', the navy had to overcome some minor niggling problems with both 'Garfish' and some of the destroyers other systems. However by the time the second ship of the class, HMS Dauntless commissioned in July of 1998, most of these problems had been solved, and by the time that the third and fourth Type 45s and the first Type 46, HMSs Diamond, Dragon and Tiger, commissioned the system was fully operational and commissioning the remaining ships between 1999 and 2005 became rather routine.
Both classes entered service so rapidly that some commented that they were rather like mass produced cars coming off a production line.

While much of the combat record of the 'Garfish/Broadsword' is still top secret, what we do know is that the missile was highly successful in both its land-based and naval version.
Within a few days of the outbreak of war the RAF were able to make Soviet Mig-25 'Foxbat-R' reconnaissance flights essentially suicidal, two thirds of the aircraft that the Soviet air force sent over the UK being shot down by 'Broadsword' missiles.

At sea the 'Garfish' showed an equally excellent performance, successfully defending Royal Navy Task Groups against several Soviet saturation attacks, the very task it had been designed to counter.

In conclusion the 'Garfish/Broadsword' missile programme was certainly the most expensive and technically ambitious missile programme that Britain had undertaken since the days of the Blue Streak and Black Arrow. It was also one of the most successful military projects of the post-war era, living up to all of its expectations when put to the ultimate test.

Using the experience gained in the project Dr. Pollard and his team would go on to produce many more successful missile designs, including an ASAT/ABM system based on 'Garfish/Broadsword', and later would be the main players in the revived British space programme when they designed the Black Arrow II and Black King launch systems. (3)
The ultimate ambition of this programme is to launch a British designed space plane, which would be launched by a new first stage, though this, as yet had not been achieved.

Appendix: Missile Specifications.

The 'Garfish' is a two stage naval SAM, consisting of a ramjet powered arrowhead upper stage, with a solid rocket booster first stage.
Speed: Mach 5+
Length: 6m for missile, 8m o.a including booster.
Span over fins: 1.5m.
Weight: Over 1,000kg.
Warhead weight: Classified.

Notes.

1. Eventually to become the Aster family of missiles.

2. The original sketch of the missile has, fortunately for posterity, survived, complete with coffee stains. It is currently held in the National Archives at Kew.

3. The Black Arrow II was based on the already proven Black Arrow design of the late 1960s, but was constructed with more modern materials and rocket engines, though it used the British trademarked HTP fuel.
Black King was a two-stage system that used Black Arrow II as an upper stage with a lower stage based on the old Blue Streak fitted with solid rocket boosters.

Origional sketch.