Polyphem German Short-Range Cruise Missile

The Polyphem was a proposed light-weight fibre-optic wire-guided surface-to-surface missile with a range of 60 km. It used a solid propellant booster rocket to launch the missile out of its canister to an initial height so that the wings and control surfaces can unfold and a more fuel economic turbojet cruise engine would kick in to propel the missile. The missile could be programmed to follow a preset course, using GPS or inertial guidance. An infrared seeker could be used to automatically pick a target and for the terminal guidance phase, but it was also possible to transfer the thermal images back to the launching platform via a 200 MBit/s data link provided by an optical fibre, and manually select the target. The fibre-optic guided Polyphem missile was intended for two kinds of mission: isolated strikes from light land vehicles against long-range targets or from small ships or helicopters against land-based targets. The Polyphem program was started in 1994 by Germany, France and Italy. Italy later left the project. A naval version, called Polyphem-S, was initially selected for the Braunschweig class corvette as anti-ship and land-attack missile, but that has been cancelled. The Polyphem program as a whole was cancelled in 2003.