Centurion launcher could improve British warship capabilities

Sometimes the best ideas come to you when you’re least expecting them. Richard Lord, a former commodore for the Royal Navy, has first-hand experience of how true this can be. Last year, a trip to the Imperial War Museum with his grandson resulted in a sketch of a new type of launcher that, if accepted by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), could dramatically improve Britain’s warship capabilities.

Fifteen months of hard work and around £1.5m later, Lord’s launcher has been built and successfully tested on Salisbury Plain. Named ’Centurion’, the adaptable launcher can fire 12-barrel, 130mm rounds of naval decoys without requiring the ship to manoeuvre into position. Currently, many static launchers are dependent on ship movement and the existing trainable (or moveable) launchers are susceptible to forces that push against them during missile fire, which can cause the balance to be off centre, leading to inaccuracy.

’The problem has been bugging me for some time,’ said Lord, who now works for defence technology group Chemring Countermeasures. ’We were frustrated by the fact that we were putting a lot of effort into improving our rounds but, to be frank, the sales weren’t occurring. Using a trainable launcher could be one solution but, when we looked at available designs, they were either heavy or ugly and I could never see them on a Royal Naval ship.’