Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing by Clancy Tom & Gresham John

Author:Clancy, Tom & Gresham, John [Clancy, Tom & Gresham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Age Range 2 Older Audience, War, Reference
ISBN: 9780425217023
Amazon: 0425217027
Goodreads: 1750581
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 1995-11-01T08:00:00+00:00

AGM-88 HARM

On May 1st, 1960, over the farmlands of central Russia, a small air battle took place that forever changed the nature of air warfare. Almost 13 miles/21 kilometers in the sky, PVO-Strany was desperately trying to shoot down one of their most hated enemies, a CIA Lockheed U-2 spy plane. It was a costly battle. Several of their own fighters were lost to “friendly fire,” and the American intruder almost escaped. What won the day for them was the first success of a new tactical weapon, the surface-to-air missile (SAM). When Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 was shot down by the proximity detonation of an S-75 Dvina/SA-2 SAM (NATO code-named Guideline), it set off a scramble to counter this new and lethal weapons technology.

“The best ECM in the world,” said an Israeli general famously, “is a 500 lb./ 227.3 kg. bomb down the feedhorn of the missile-tracking radar.” He was right. But how many aircraft would he lose getting into position to hit a given SAM radar? Fixed SAM sites tend to be protected by layers of optically tracked AAA guns. Thus early USAF plans to hit such sites in Cuba (during the 1962 missile crisis) with tactical fighter bombers loaded with unguided rockets and canisters of napalm would have undoubtedly exacted a high price.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy, long a leader in SAM technology, began to think about the problem of suppressing SAM sites. In 1961, out at the same Naval Ordnance Test Station laboratory that had developed the Sidewinder and Sparrow AAMs, an idea was born that might provide a remedy. Known as an anti-radiation missile (ARM), it was quite simply a missile designed to home in on the emissions of the SAM tracking radar, guiding in to kill the radar. By killing the radar, and hopefully its skilled operators, the SAM site would effectively be “blinded” and unable to function. The first of these missiles was known as the ASM-N-10, later designated the AGM-45 Shrike, taking its name from a predatory bird that kills its prey by impaling them on the thorns or spikes of plants or fences. Simple in concept, the Shrike took some time to perfect; the first AGM-45 Shrike missiles entered fleet service in 1963.

Along with the development of the ARM came a vital piece of equipment which was required to make it functional, the radar homing and warning receiver (RHAW), or radar warning receiver (RWR) as it is known today. Amazing as it may sound, no U.S. tactical aircraft sent to Southeast Asia in 1965 went with any sort of warning system to tell the aircrew they were being tracked by enemy. Thus, when President Lyndon Johnson began the systematic bombing of North Vietnam, with Operations Flaming Dart and Rolling Thunder, USAF, USN, and USMC aircraft began to fall in numbers that were more than just disturbing.

Interestingly, the USAF took a different approach to suppressing SAMs than the Navy or the Marine Corps. The Navy/Marine policy on SAM suppression was just that: prosecute to

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