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Blowpipe Surface-to-Air Missile

The Shorts Blowpipe is a man-portable surface-to-air missile that was in use with the British Army and Royal Marines from 1975. It was superseded by an interim design, Javelin, and later the greatly improved Starstreak.

The missile is shipped as a single round in a storage cylinder/firing tube. The aiming unit is clipped to the launch tube and fired from the operator's shoulder. To reduce the overall size of the container, the rear fins of the missile are stored in the larger diameter cylinder at the front of the tube (this also contains the Yagi antenna for transmitting guidance signals); during firing, the fins slip onto the rear of the missile as it flies through and are held there by heat-activated adhesive tapes. This gives the launch container a unique shape, seemingly oversized at the front and extremely thin at the rear. The missile is powered by a short duration solid rocket for launch, then by a sustainer motor once it is well clear of the launch tube.

The Blowpipe's guidance is initially semi-automatic with the missile gathered to the centre of the sight's crosshairs by the infrared optic atop the aiming unit. Two to three seconds after launch, missile guidance is switched to fully MCLOS mode, and the operator regains full control of the missile. The operator has to steer the missile all the way to its target manually via a small thumb joystick. The operator can opt not to use autogathering when engaging low flying targets such as helicopters, but then has to super-elevate the launcher to ensure that the missile does not hit the ground. Four flares in the tail of the missile make it visible in flight, first to the infrared optic, then to the operator. Detonation is either by proximity or contact fuse. In emergencies, the operator can end an engagement by shutting off the power to the transmitter with the system switch, after which the missile will immediately self-destruct. The aiming unit can then be removed from the empty missile container and fitted to a new round.

Blowpipe was found to be particularly ineffective when used to engage a crossing target or to chase a target moving rapidly away from the operator. Its poor performance led to it being withdrawn from British service. In 1986, some of the mothballed units were sent clandestinely to equip the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.(info from Wikipedia)

Source Files:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1369953837

This is designed to be used for cold war scenarios and Addons.

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Addon features:

- Blowpipe surface-to-air missile.

- Blowpipe surface-to-air missile launcher.

- Ammo box with 20 missiles and 8 launchers (look in props section in the editor).

Missile and launcher features:

Advantages:

- The Missile is what is know as a Manual command to line of sight (MCLOS) missile using radio control to get a lock on the target it must be within the aiming crosshairs to lock on to it once fired the missile will fly to the to the target and destroy it.

- The Missile has a max range of 3.5km.

- it is claimed to be virtually impossible to decoy it away from a target with flares.

Disadvantages:

- Battlefield obscurants, such as smoke or fog, can degrade the ability of the missile operator to see the target, and could potentially interfere with the missiles guidance. This is also the case (to a slightly lesser extent) in misty or rainy conditions.

- The training level of the operator is critical since, unlike infrared guided missiles, the operator has to track the target exactly with the sighting unit aimpoint (MCLOS). If the aircraft detects the missile it has the whole period of the missile flight time to engage in avoidance manoeuvres, which adds additional challenge to the missile operator's target-tracking task.

Future features:

- Custom 3d models and textures.

Known issues:

- Due to Arma 3 having no MACLOS guidance mode the missile has to use SACLOS guidance.

notes:

- The launcher is made up of various models from ARMA 2 and its DLCs.

- The missile model is a heavy modified stinger missile model from ARMA 2.

3rd party addons used in the screenshots:

- 3 Commando Brigades British Armed Forces Addons.

- Spearpoint: UK Armed Forces 1965-85.

- Red Hammer Studios RHS: Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Special thanks to:

- Bohemia interactive for the base textures and models.

- Slatts for his Unfinished Bits And Bobs public model pack.

- eggbeast for his Simple O2 tutorials.