Aspide

Aspide (the Italian name for the asp) is an Italian medium range air-to-air and surface-to-air missile produced by Selenia (then by Alenia Aeronautica, now a part of Leonardo S.p.A.). It is provided with semi-active radar homing seeker. It is very similar to the American AIM-7 Sparrow, using the same airframe, but uses an inverse monopulse seeker that is far more accurate and much less susceptible to ECM than the original conical scanning version.

This resemblance, and that Selenia was provided with the technology know-how of the AIM-7 (around 1,000 of which it had produced under licence), has generally led non-Italian press to refer to the Aspide as a Sparrow variant. However, the Aspide had original electronics and warhead, and a new and more powerful engine. Closed-loop hydraulics were also substituted for Sparrow's open-loop type, which gave Aspide better downrange maneuverability. Even the control surfaces are different, replacing the original triangular wings, fixed in the air-to-air and instead foldable in the surface-to-air version, to a newly designed common cropped delta fixed version.

A similar design is the UK's Skyflash, which entered service about the same time. The US's own Sparrow fleet also added a monopulse seeker in the AIM-7M versions of 1982.