Combined with the long desired range, as much as 3,000 yards (2,700 m), the missile ended up being 206 pounds (93 kg), far too heavy to make it man portable. For any given level of penetration, HESH required much more explosive, and Malarka's need to deal with main battle tanks demanded a 57 pounds (26 kg) warhead. Primary among these was the Army's ongoing interest in the use of large high-explosive squash head (HESH) warheads instead of the more common high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) used by most anti-tank weapons of the era. Malkara was one of the earliest anti-tank missiles, and as such it had a number of issues. In 1956, Edwards convinced the board to take up the development of a replacement for Malkara using a new guidance system developed in-house. They were already aware of the British Army's unhappiness with the recently deployed Malkara anti-tank missile, and felt there was an opportunity here. Daboo for a lightweight anti-tank missile. This led them to the ideas of John Housego and J.E. Unwilling to give up on the missile field, George Edwards led an effort to find a new project that could be undertaken with company funds alone. When Red Hebe was cancelled in the aftermath of the 1957 Defence White Paper, the company's guided missile department had no remaining projects. The last, the Red Dean/ Red Hebe air-to-air missile was so delayed and over-designed that the company began to have a bad reputation with the Ministry of Supply, especially with John Clemow, the Director. By the mid-1950s had been involved in four projects, all of which were cancelled. Vickers-Armstrongs had been developing guided missiles from the earliest stages of UK research in the field, setting up the Guided Weapons Department at Weybridge (Brooklands) in Surrey. Approximately 18,000 were produced in total. This left the Vigilant in use with the infantry and airborne forces well into the 1970s. Swingfire did not arrive until 1969, and during that time the medium-range man portable version had been dropped. The order also sealed the US decision to license Vigilant for local production. The order immediately resulted in several additional orders from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Abu Dhabi, along with Vigilant-armed Ferret sales to the UAE and Yemen. An order for several thousand Vigilant was placed late in 1961 as an "interim weapon" whilst awaiting Swingfire. By this time the War Office had already decided that their ultimate weapon for this role would be the Swingfire. On several occasions the Office explicitly stated they did not want to provide any encouragement to the team as this might make it harder to close the division down in the future.Īfter considerable debate spanning several years, the project eventually won an initial order as it was the only suitable design to quickly arm the Ferret armoured car. By 1960 it had completed development and an extensive testing program, but the War Office remained disinterested as they wished for the Department to be disbanded as part of the ongoing formation of British Aircraft Corporation. ĭevelopment began at Vickers-Armstrongs' in 1956 as a private project in order to prevent the company's Weybridge Guided Missile Department having nothing to do after the cancellation of Red Dean. It was also licence-built in the United States by Clevite for the US Marine Corps, and sometimes known as Clevite rounds in this case. The Vickers Vigilant was a British 1960s era MCLOS wire-guided anti-tank missile used by the British Army.
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