It was developed by Thomson CSF Matra (now Thales Group) and consists of a mobile land-based variant as well as various naval ones.

Originally the Crotale R440 system was developed by Rockwell International and Thomson-Houston (and Mistral) in France for South Africa, where it was named Cactus.

The automatic command to line-of-sight guidance system uses both radar and IRST to locate a target and to track it and the missile.

This version used the new VT-1 missile with Mach 3.5 speed, load factor to 35G, 11 km range, 13 kg warhead (8 m kill-zone) and 6,000 m ceiling.

[5] An early '90s proposal to fit the system (in its eight-round form) to a Leclerc tank chassis in order to provide a battlefield air defence vehicle for protecting armored formations on the move was not realised due to post-Cold War cutbacks.

A new sensor system was jointly developed by Samsung and Thales to meet the required operational capability of the upcoming K-SAM Pegasus,[6] as well as a new indigenous missile by LIG Nex1.

[10] The system combines Crotale Mk3 VT-1 missile and Shikra multi-beam search radar, with 150 km (detection range).

The missile is sent guidance commands by the base unit directing keeping it on the line of sight until its infrared proximity fuze senses that it is near its target and explodes.