March 10, 2011: Singapore is replacing its twelve British Rapier anti-aircraft missile systems with Israeli Spyder systems. Spyder is a mobile, short range system using, as many such systems do these days, air-to-air missiles. Spyder launchers (truck mounted, with four box like launch cells each) can carry either the Python 5 heat seeking missile (3.2 meters/ten feet long, 105 kg/231 pounds, with a range of 15 kilometers) or the Derby radar guided missile (3.6 meter/11.2 feet long, 121.4 kg/267 pounds, with a range of 65 kilometers). The Derby is actually a larger Python, with more fuel and a different guidance system.

Each Spyder system has four missile launcher trucks, a radar truck and a missile re-supply truck. Each system costs about $11 million. The Spyder radar system has a maximum range of 100 kilometers. The missiles can hit targets as high as 9,000 meters (28,000 feet) and as low as 20 meters (63 feet). Deliveries will begin this year. The older Rapier has a range of only 6.8 kilometers and entered service in the 1960s.