[1][2] It was a development of the earlier and much larger Blue Boar television guided glide bomb, making it smaller, replacing the television camera with the radar seeker from the Red Dean air-to-air missile, and carrying a smaller warhead of 1,700 pounds (770 kg).
Green Cheese arose as part of the 'Sverdlov crisis', when the Royal Navy were concerned over the appearance of a new Soviet heavy cruiser class.
Green Cheese was a longer-ranged and guided replacement for the unguided Red Angel, which had required an approach by the attacker too close to be considered survivable.
The rising weight made it too heavy for the existing Gannets, and the Buccaneer had enough performance to directly attack the ships with conventional bombs, at least in the short term.
One of the earliest responses to the Sverdlov was the Red Angel anti-shipping rocket, essentially a greatly enlarged version of the armour-piercing RP-3 used during World War II.
[4] Through this same period, the Royal Air Force had been developing a large television guided glide bomb, Blue Boar.
However, a smaller development under OR.1127 was already being considered as an anti-shipping weapon which could be launched in large numbers from the Vickers Valiant while flying at high altitude, around 50,000 feet (15,000 m), far beyond the range of the ship's guns.
[6][7] Arranging this to occur proved more difficult than initially imagined and was ultimately abandoned in favour of a traditional warhead, which had been the plan for the Valiant version all along.