Blue Jay developed as a fairly conventional-looking missile with cropped delta wings mounted just aft of the midpoint and small rectangular control surfaces in tandem towards the rear. Internally, things were considerably more complex. The size of the tube-based electronics left little room for a warhead, which had to be moved to the rear of the fuselage. This left no room for the actuators for the rear-mounted control fins, which were instead operated by nose-mounted actuators via long pushrods. The actuators were powered by compressed air from bottles at the extreme rear, which also powered a turbo-alternator for electrical power after launch. In the case of a miss, the missile self-destructed when the alternator slowed down after the air ran out.