To enhance the protection of the supercarrier Queen Elizabeth, a Royal Navy Wildcat fighter successfully launched the Martlet light missile for the first time in front-line combat. Helicopters deployed from the Royal Navy's Defender in the Pacific Ocean attacked an inflatable target, the first operational demonstration of the group's ability to counter hordes of small boats and similar vessels.
Although not a single aircraft carrier has been sunk in combat since 1945, they are often seen as vulnerable. As a result, the Navy, which operates appropriate attack carrier formations, has put a lot of effort into protecting these assets.
In many ways, the carrier appears to be nakedly attacked. It doesn't carry guns, doesn't have any obvious missile batteries, and it looks like a big floating target. The fact that aircraft carriers are not only difficult to sink, but can move at alarming speeds while staying on the high seas as much as possible makes it difficult to even find them, let alone target them.
In addition, each aircraft carrier is surrounded by a protective net provided by the ships, submarines and shore-based aircraft of its escort task force, as well as its own fighter wing and helicopter, which extends hundreds of miles around it. Therefore, any attacking force must penetrate the many layers of defense designed to detect and eliminate everything from torpedoes to cruise missiles.
However, aircraft carriers don't always spend time in open water, and as technology advances, the range of potential threats continues to expand. One of them is in vulnerable situations, such as when approaching a port, where hostile forces may launch attacks with swarms of boats, jet skis and similar dinghies.
In response to this situation, a Martlet missile was dropped from the Wildcat and accelerated to Mach 1.5 in 0.3 seconds. Each Feral can carry 20 laser sensor missiles, making it suitable for handling multiple stationary and moving targets.
The Martlet missile, formerly known as the Light Multipurpose Missile (LMM), was developed by Thales Air Defense Systems. It is actually not newly developed, it is developed on the basis of a shoulder-to-air missile "Starstreak" developed by the United Kingdom itself, the "Starlight" missile began to enter service in 1997, is a very distinctive, with 3 tungsten alloy bullets 2-stage rocket propulsion surface-to-air missiles, the combat ramp is 7 kilometers, the speed can reach Mach 4, faster than the general shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile rate of fire, and does not use infrared guidance such as "Stinger", but the use of laser beam guidance.