Missile Firestreak

The Firestreak was a British first-generation, passive infrared homing air-to-air missile. Developed in the early 1950s under the rainbow code "Blue Jay," the project originated from requirements for a tail-aspect weapon. The first airborne test launch occurred in 1954 from a Venom aircraft, destroying a target drone. The missile entered active service in 1957.

The weapon operated as a rear-aspect, fire-and-forget pursuit missile. Guidance was provided by a lead telluride infrared seeker protected by an eight-faceted conical arsenic trisulphide nose designed to prevent ice accretion. The seeker was cooled to extremely low temperatures using an ammonia-cooled heat exchanger. Because the vacuum-tube electronics generated heat, the missile required external cooling from the launch aircraft prior to takeoff, as well as heated air from the aircraft's engine compressor to prevent moving parts from freezing before launch. Internally, the electronics occupied the forward fuselage, requiring the blast-fragmentation warhead to be positioned at the rear, wrapped around the rocket nozzle. Consequently, the actuators for the rear control fins were mounted in the nose and connected via long pushrods. The solid-fuel rocket motor was positioned in the center of the fuselage. The warhead was triggered by optical proximity fuzes behind windows in the forward fuselage or by contact fuzes on the wings, dispersing fragments forward upon detonation. To launch the weapon, the seeker was slaved to the radar of the host aircraft until acquiring a lock. The missile could only be fired in clear conditions outside of clouds, and ground crew required protective gear during handling due to toxicity from the motor or coolant.

The missile was operated by the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm, the Kuwait Air Force, and the Royal Saudi Air Force. It equipped the Lightning interceptor, Sea Vixen naval fighter, and Javelin all-weather interceptor. Although a successor missile, the Red Top, entered service in 1964, the Firestreak remained in service with the Royal Air Force until 1988. This prolonged service occurred because older models of the Lightning interceptor lacked the vertical tail area required to stabilize the larger wings of the successor missile.