IAI, Thales team up to offer Sea Serpent anti-ship missile for UK I-SSGW requirement
14 April 2021
by Robin Hughes & Richard Scott
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has teamed up with UK-based Thales to offer the Sea Serpent guided anti-ship/anti-surface weapon system as a potential low-risk military off-the-shelf solution for UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD’s) ship-launched Interim Surface-to-Surface Guided Weapon (I-SSGW) requirement.
I-SSGW is intended to equip several UK Royal Navy (RN) Type 23 frigates to bridge the capability gap following the retirement of the service’s current GWS 60 Harpoon Block 1C system from the end of 2023.
In March 2019 the UK MoD’s Weapons, Torpedoes, Tomahawk, and Harpoon (TTH) Project Team released a Prior Information Notice (PIN) detailing its intention to acquire a ship-launched over-the-horizon precision anti-ship capability; a subsequent provision specified an additional terrain-following precision maritime land attack capability. The