Royal Navy ship test fires Sea Viper missile system

HMS Defender, deployed to Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, test fires its Sea Viper missile system during a mission to locate, and destroy a drone designed to be difficult to track and intercept.

Video transcript

[ROCKET FIRE]

A.W.W. MCDONNELL: My name's Petty Officer A.W.W. McDonnell. And I am the Sea Viper missile controller aboard "HMS Defender." Whether "HMS Defender" is working as a single unit or as part of a task group, it's my role to provide air and missile defense.

"HMS Defender" is conducting exercise formidable shield 23, which is a large NATO exercise where we have been using experimental hardware and software to push our sensors to the limit, ready for the fight of tomorrow. We have tracked ballistic, subsonic, and supersonic targets, shared tracks in new ways, whilst also working with our allies and partners. The final part of Formidable Shield 23 will comprise of HMS Defender conducting a live missile engagement against an unmanned aerial vehicle, or what's known as a UAV.

- Target track 98384, assess threatening. Bruiser 9384, self-assigned LED. Birds affirm Bruiser 9384. Bird 28 Bruiser track 9384.

Five seconds to impact. Viper assist kill. Bruiser 9384 splashed.

Destroy, destroy, destroy. Viper roger. Cease firing.

- [INAUDIBLE] and the upper deck remained out of bounds to all personnel until further notice. That's all.

- [INAUDIBLE] Can you put in the log "shift is in Yankee and maintains positive splashing."

- Yeah. So I think--

- --it would be doubtful if--

- [INAUDIBLE] ahead 70 [INAUDIBLE] zero.

- We need [INAUDIBLE] to speed up or slow down.

- [INAUDIBLE] start to see.

- All position labor, investigate unknown at 9169 bearing 111, 31 miles. Reports on [INAUDIBLE].

- AUOTTL telemetry off [INAUDIBLE].