Corvus a chaff decoy launching system - geograph

Corvus chaff launcher is a British shipborne chaff decoy launching system manufactured by

Vickers Ltd Vickers Limited was a British engineering conglomerate. The business began in Sheffield in 1828 as a steel foundry and became known for its church bells, going on to make shafts and propellers for ships, armour plate and then artillery. Entir ...

Group. It is a lightweight, quick reaction system for the self-defence of surface vessels against

surface-to-surface A surface-to-surface missile (SSM) is a missile designed to be launched from the ground or the sea and strike targets on land or at sea. They may be fired from hand-held or vehicle mounted devices, from fixed installations, or from a ship. They ar ...

and

air-to-surface missiles An air-to-surface missile (ASM) or air-to-ground missile (AGM) is a missile designed to be launched from military aircraft at targets on land or sea. There are also unpowered guided glide bombs not considered missiles. The two most common prop ...

, where chaff dispensing rockets form a

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

decoy screen.Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California report into Electronic Warfare Technology P112
/ref> The system comprises multi-barrelled

rocket launcher A rocket launcher is a weapon that launches an unguided, rocket-propelled projectile. History The earliest rocket launchers documented in imperial China consisted of arrows modified by the attachment of a rocket motor to the shaft a few i ...

, launcher control, firing panel and a maximum load of 8 rockets. The arrangement offers distraction and centroid operating modes, with the two differing in the

azimuth An azimuth (; from ) is the horizontal angle from a cardinal direction, most commonly north, in a local or observer-centric spherical coordinate system. Mathematically, the relative position vector from an observer ( origin) to a point ...

angle at firing and the range in which the chaff is released. Corvus features a cylindrical rotating structure that carries eight launching tubes mounted in two sets of three, one above the other and at 90° with two more tubes aligned midway between these, at a fixed elevation of 30°. A deck-mounted

pedestal A pedestal or plinth is a support at the bottom of a statue, vase, column, or certain altars. Smaller pedestals, especially if round in shape, may be called socles. In civil engineering, it is also called ''basement''. The minimum height o ...

supports the rotating structure on its training bearing and houses a self-contained electrical power unit for the control circuits and associated electrical equipment. The firing and control panel is located in the host vessel's

combat information centre A combat information center (CIC) or action information centre (AIC) is a room in a warship or AWACS aircraft that functions as a tactical center and provides processed information for command and control of the near battlespace or area of o ...

. The rockets are reloaded by hand from a ready-to-use locker, located close to the launching platform.

References

{{Reflist

External links

The Launcher being loadedCorvus Chaff Rocket Launcher3D models showing firing sequence at artstation.com
Military decoys Naval warfare Weapons countermeasures