Polyphem

The Polyphem was a proposed European light-weight fibre-optic wire-guided surface-to-surface missile with a range of 60 km.

Polyphem is the German name of Polyphemus, the cyclops in the Odyssey that got his eye stabbed out by Ulysses.

The missile can be programmed to follow a preset course, using GPS or inertial guidance.

An infrared seeker can be used to automatically pick a target and for the terminal guidance phase, but it is also possible to transfer the thermal images back to the launching platform via a 200 MBit/s data link provided by an optical fibre, and manually select the target.

[1] A naval version, called Polyphem-S, was initially selected for the Braunschweig class corvette as anti-ship and land-attack missile, but that has been cancelled.