The A244 was initially conceived at Whitehead Alenia in 1968 as a replacement for the USN Mark 44 Mod 2 and shares many design similarities with the older weapon.

Mod 2 (intended for fixed-wing aircraft launch) had a length of 2.75 m (9.0 ft) and an endurance of 6,000 m (3.2 nmi).

All of the older versions used a lead-acid battery power source and carried a 45.4 kg (100 lb) warhead.

The Mod 3 torpedo uses a CIACIO-S seeker, consisting of an acoustic homing head containing the transducer assembly, transmitter, and related beamforming circuits, and a frame housing all the remaining electronic components.

It can also discriminate between decoys and real targets in the presence of heavy reverberations especially emitted pulses and signal processing.