Velvet Glove

The Velvet Glove was a short-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile designed by CARDE (today DRDC Valcartier) and produced by Canadair starting in 1953. 131 Velvet Gloves had been completed when the program was terminated in 1956, officially because of concerns about its ability to be launched at supersonic speeds from the Avro Arrow then under design, but also from the design being overtaken by developments in the United States.

Small scale work on what would become the Velvet Glove started in 1948 at CADRE, and by 1951 the plans were advanced enough to put forth the design as armament on the Avro CF-100 Canuck fighter that was then entering service with the RCAF. Canadair was selected as the manufacturer, and Westinghouse was commissioned to build the radar guidance unit. The final missile design was about ten feet long and just under a foot in diameter. It used four fins at the tail for steering, and was guided by a semi-active radar located behind a conical nose cone. Westinghouse's microwave radar proximity fuze fired the 60 pound (27 kg) warhead.

To test the aerodynamics of the missile, CADRE used Gerald Bull's method of firing test shapes from sabboted artillery rounds instead of building an expensive supersonic wind tunnel. The shapes were fired through a series of cards, and the position and shape of the resulting holes could be used to measure whether or not the missile was flying stable. This basic concept would be key to Project HARP and many of Bull's later concepts.

In 1952 ground-launched testing started at the Picton Range, a small test site set up outside Picton, Ontario near the RCAF base at Trenton, Ontario. Air-launches from a CF-100 started in 1954, with the aircraft flying from Trenton to fire over Picton. The site was later used to launch models of the Arrow for aerodynamics testing. Testing of the Velvet Glove then moved to an operational setting at Cold Lake, Alberta. By this point the Arrow was slated to replace the CF-100 within a few years, and the RCAF had always demanded that it fire the much more advanced active-radar Sparrow II missile under design for the US Navy. Interest in the Velvet Glove waned, as the Sparrow outperformed it in all ways.

The Sparrow ran into lengthy delays, and the Navy eventually gave up on the design, turning to the simpler semi-automatic Sparrow III. Options for the Arrow were studied, including taking over the Sparrow program at Canadair, turning to the Falcon/rocket mix being used by contemporary USAF interceptors, or re-starting the Velvet Glove project. There were concerns that the Velvet Glove would be difficult to launch at supersonic speeds, likely due to its small control surfaces not having enough authority and therefore representing a risk to the aircraft. In the end Canadair was instructed to take over the Sparrow II, ending development of the Velvet Glove for good. When the Arrow project was later canceled, work on the Sparrow II also ceased. The Picton Range closed in 1957.