SS.11

The SS.11 is a French manual command to line of sight wire-guided anti-tank missile manufactured by Nord Aviation.

[2] The first combat use of the SS.11 was in 1956 by the French Air Force, fired from a Dassault MD 311 light twin-engine transport, as a method of attacking fortified caves located in steep mountain gorges during the Algerian war.

The combat experiment proved extremely successful and became standard on other French Air Force MD 311s stationed in the Algerian war theater.

In September 1966, 12 U.S. Army UH-1B helicopters belonging to a special unit, fitted with the XM-58 stabilized sight arrived in South Vietnam.

Other navies soon followed Libya and bought the SS.12(M) and SS.11(M) for their light naval vessels; among them Brunei, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Senegal, and Tunisia.

NORD also developed a ten-missile trainable launcher for either the SS.11(M) or SS.12(M), which was sold in numbers due to its extremely cost-effective firepower for both light and medium size naval craft.

[2] One of the most unusual uses of the SS.11 was that of probably the smallest anti-shipping missile in the world, with the Swedish Marines employing it in the anti-landing craft role for decades, until it was replaced by a specialized version of the AGM-114 Hellfire.

It was also used by the Finnish coastal artillery for covering narrow channels in the archipelago, being replaced in this role by the Israeli SPIKE ER (Rannikko-Ohjus 06).

[2] Unlike the earlier SS.10, which steered similarly to an airplane with small flight controls called "spoilers" located on the missiles wings, the SS.11 is steered in flight by a unique system developed by NORD for France's first air-to-air missile, the AA.20, called TVC (thrust vectoring control) in which four small vanes are located around the sustainer's exhaust, which under command momentarily push into the sustainer's thrust causing the missile to move in the direction commanded.

TVC has been copied by other missile designs, including the Russians with their 9M14 Malyutka (NATO name: AT-3 Sagger) and the Euromissile HOT and MILAN developed by joint venture of the French and Germans.

SS.11 anti-tank missile-launcher version of the French tank AMX-13
The SS.11 was integrated with the UH-1B Huey with the US Army and even saw limited combat use in Vietnam.
Shooting a missile from a SS.11 VLRA French in 1971.