Maximum Altitude for Sea Cat Missile

[rmeckman]

In the Falklands campaign, the target altitudes for both the British Sea Cat and Argentinian Tiger Cat missiles are between 30 and 3500 ft AGL even though these missiles have a maximum range of 4 nm. Is this intentional to account for the guidance system employed by these missiles?

[thewood1]

I use this site for a lot of info on missiles. Its a little tough to read because a lot of its translated. But found it be fairly detailed with some gaps.

https://en.missilery.info/missile/seacat

The first paragraph specifically states 6km range and 3km max altitude. I assume its something to do with tracking at angle.

Same ranges are mentioned here as well.

https://www.seaforces.org/wpnsys/SURFAC ... lf-SAM.htm

[rmeckman]

So far, the only reference I can find that roughly matches the database entries for these missiles is

https://weaponsystems.net/system/1374-Tigercat,

which states that the maximum altitude was limited to about 1 km due to the low power of the rocket motor. Other references usually have longer ranges. With a maximum altitude of 3500 ft, ships may have been better off keeping the 40 mm Bofors that the Sea Cat was intended to replace. Maybe the 3500 should be meters rather than feet?

[thewood1]

Frankly, using the same TV tracking system on a Bofors might have been better.