MBDA Aspide

Aspide is an Italian medium range air-to-air and surface-to-air missile, produced by Selenia and its successors Alenia Aeronautica and MBDA. It was developed in the 1970s to replace licence-built AIM-7 Sparrows on Italian Air Force F-104S Starfighter interceptors, and because it looks like the Sparrow the non-Italian press often calls it a Sparrow variant. Compared with Sparrow it has an inverse monopulse seeker that is far more accurate and much less susceptible to electronic countermeasures, new electronics and a new warhead, and a more powerful rocket engine. Surface-to-air versions replace the triangular wings with cropped delta wings so that the launch canisters can be smaller, and the missile is used from ships and from ground launchers in Italy, Spain and many other countries.