One of the least known IR missiles is A-Darter . The South African-Brizilian made AAM.
We have a quick review in here
The Kentron A-Darter (V3E Agile Darter), a fifth-generation missile system, is currently in the development phase. It was in 2006 being jointly funded by South Africa and Brazil. In September 2006, BAE Systems announced Denel had selected its SiIMU®02 solid-state inertial measurement unit to provide mid-course guidance for the A-Darter.
The A-Darter, expected to become the V3E upon entry into SAAF service.
The missile incorporates a high-agility airframe, greatly improved manoeuvrability and an extended range. An imaging IR seeker ensures excellent countermeasure rejection and very accurate terminal guidance. Capabilities include lock-on after launch and memory tracking. Designation may be via the aircraft’s radar, a helmet sight or the missiles autonomous scan feature if radar silence is required. Long-range intercepts, beyond IR detection range, are possible using the lock-on after launch mode.
Use is made of thrust-vectoring tail controls. It has also been reported that targeting algorithms include advanced spatial filtering techniques (that ‘see’ the difference in size and shape between an aircraft and a decoy) and velocity profiling (to sense the difference in speed between the target and a decoy).
Denel Dynamics successfully completed the missile qualification and certification for it’s 5th generation A-Darter IIR Short Range Air-to-Air Missile (SRAAM) System, with the Type Certificate issued in September 2019 by Brazil and South Africa.
The Formal Qualification Review for the A-Darter missile has been successfully concluded by the A-Darter Development project team in August 2019. The certification authorities from Brazil and South Africa gave the final approval for the issuing of the Type Certificate in September 2019. The Institute for Industrial Development and Coordination (IFI) and Directorate System Integrity (DSI) are the responsible certification authorities in Brazil and South Africa respectively.
The A-Darter has already been fully integrated and cleared with no aircraft/missile launch restrictions on the JAS-39 Gripen C/D.
It also can launched from BAE Hawk 120 , A1M-AMX , F5BR
Guidance:
Two-colour imaging Infra-red with laser fuze.
The A-Darter is rumoured to be more maneuverable than the IRIS-T, however after the initial prototype variants were sent to SAAB for integration onto Gripen they have since never been able to produce a missile of useable quality.
Would be interesting to see if Brazil has any further luck manufacturing.
Seeing as Gaijin tested the R-Darter on the Gripen, we may eventually see an A and R Darter loadout present but who knows.
Like most things to do with SA the project fell apart in the early '00s. There’s a good secretprojects thread on it
Kentron/Denel were also working on an air-augmented AAM in the early 90s. Bear in mind this is years before the Meteor missile… honestly I suspect some of their engineers left to join BAE and assisted on Meteor
Your not wrong, because when the ANC came in power in '94 they within 2 years were bringing BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) so most of the good white engineers at Kentron were mostly (in the early days before 2007) replaced with inexperienced, uneducated, incompetent, lazy blacks just started stealing money from the project and all project costed much more from the stealing of project money.
Most of the white engineers moved overseas since they were going to have their positions all replaced with blacks.
Note: I’m not being racist I simply state facts that even most of you none South Africans can understand (not calling you guys stupid btw).
