Storm Shadow - History

History

British Aerospace and Matra were competing with McDonnell Douglas, Texas Instruments/Short Brothers, Hughes/Smiths Industries, Daimler-Benz Aerospace/Bofors, GEC-Marconi and Rafael. The BAe/Matra Storm Shadow was selected on 25 June 1996. A development and production contract was signed on 11 February 1997, by which time Matra and BAe had completed the merger of their missile businesses to form Matra BAe Dynamics. France ordered 500 SCALP missiles in January 1998.

The first successful fully guided firing of the Storm Shadow/SCALP EG took place at the CEL Biscarosse range in France at the end of December 2000 from a Mirage 2000N. The first British firing occurred on 25 May 2001 from a Tornado flying from BAE Warton.

Storm Shadow entered service with the Royal Air Force in late 2001. It was first used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq by No. 617 Squadron. On 12 September 2006 three Italian Tornado IDS left for South Africa to complete the integration of the Storm Shadow.

French Air Force used an undisclosed number of SCALP-EG missiles since the first night of operations over Libya in 2011. In March 2011 Storm Shadows were fired at Libyan air defence installations by Tornado GR4s during Operation Ellamy, Britain's response to the 2011 Libyan civil war. SCALP/EG's were also fired by French Rafales against the Libyan Al Jufra Air Base.

On 26 August 2011 it was reported that Storm Shadows had been deployed against a military bunker in Sirte, the home town of Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

On the 14 December 2011, Italian Defence Officials noted that Italian Tornado IDS aircraft had fired between 20 and 30 Storm Shadows during the Libyan Campaign. This was the first time that Italian aircraft had fired the missile in anger, and it was reported the missile had a 97 per cent success rate.