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Surface Mount

Surface-to-air-Missile

1. Guided surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs, were under development when World War II ended, notably by the Germans, but were not sufficiently perfected to be used in combat. This changed in the 1950s and '60s with the rapid development of sophisticated SAM systems in the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain, and France. With other industrialized nations following suit, surface-to-air missiles of indigenous design, particularly in the smaller categories, were fielded by many armies and navies.

2. The Soviet Union committed more technical and fiscal resources tothe development of guided-missile air-defense systems than any other nation. Beginning with the SA-1 Guild, developed in the immediate postwar period, the Soviets steadily fielded SAMs of growing sophistication. These fell into two categories: systems such as the Guild, the SA-3 Goa, the SA-5 Gammon, and the SA-10 Grumble, which were deployed in defense of fixed installations; andmobile tactical systems capable of accompanying land forces. Mostof the tactical systems had naval versions. The SA-2 Guideline, introduced in 1958, was the most widely deployed of the early SAMs and was the first surface-to-air guided-missile system used in combat. This two-stage missile with a solid booster and a liquid-propellant (kerosene and nitric acid) sustainer, could engagetargets at ranges of 28 miles and as high as 60,000 feet. Equipped with an array of van-mounted radars for target acquisition and tracking and for missile tracking and command guidance, Guideline proved effective in Vietnam. With adequate warning, U.S.fighters could outmaneuver the relatively large missiles, called "flying telephone poles" by pilots, and electronic countermeasures (ECM) reduced the effectiveness of the tracking radars; but, while these SAMs inflicted relatively few losses, they forced U.S. aircraft down to low altitudes, where antiaircraft artillery and small arms exacted a heavy toll. Later versions of the SA-2 were equipped withoptical tracking to counter the effects of ECM; this became a standard feature on SAM systems. After retirement from first-line Soviet service, the SA-2 remained in use in the Third World.

3. The SA-3 Goa, derived from the Guideline but modified for use against low-altitude targets, was first deployed in 1963—primarily in defense of fixed installations. The SA-N-1 was a similar naval missile.

4. The SA-4 Ganef was a long-range mobile system first deployed in the mid-1960s; the missiles, carried in pairs on a tracked launcher, used drop-off solid-fuel boosters and a ramjet sustainer motor. Employing a combination of radar command guidance and active radar homing, and supported by an array of mobile radars for target acquisition, tracking, and guidance, they could engage targets over the horizon. (Because the SA-4 strongly resembled theearlier British Bloodhound, NATO assigned it the code name Ganef, meaning "Thief" in Hebrew.) Beginning in the late 1980s, the SA-4 was replaced by the SA-12 Gladiator, a more compact and capable system.

5. The SA-5 Gammon was a high- and medium-altitude strategic missile system with a range of 185 miles; it was exported to Syria and Libya. The SA-6 Gainful was a mobile tactical system with a range of two to 35 miles and a ceiling of 50,000 feet. Three 19-foot missiles were carried in canisters atop a tracked transporter-erector-launcher, or TEL (see photograph), and the radar and fire-control systems were mounted on a similar vehicle, each of which supported four TELs. Themissiles used semiactive radar homing and were powered by a combination of solid-rocket and ramjet propulsion. (The SA-N-3 Goblet was a similar naval system.) Gainful, the first truly mobile land-based SAM system, was first used in combat during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and was highly effective at first against Israeli fighters. The Mach-3 missile proved virtually impossible to outmaneuver, forcing the fighters to descend below effective radar coverage, where antiaircraft guns such as the ZSU 23-4 mobile system were particularly lethal. (Similar factors prevailed in the 1982  Falklands conflict, where long-range British Sea Dart missiles achieved relatively few kills but forced Argentine aircraft down to wave-top level.) The SA-6 wasreplaced by the SA-11 Gadfly beginning in the 1980s.

6. The SA-8 Gecko, first deployed in the mid-1970s, was a fully mobile system mounted on a novel six-wheeled amphibious vehicle. Each vehicle carried four canister-launched, semiactive radar homing missiles, with a range of about 7.5 miles, plus guidance and tracking equipment in a rotating turret. It had excellent performance but, in Syrian hands during the 1982 conflict in Lebanon, proved vulnerable to Israeli electronic countermeasures. The equivalent naval system was the widely deployed SA-N-4 Goblet.

7. The SA-7 Grail shoulder-fired, infrared-homing missile was first deployed outside the Soviet Union in the final stages of the Vietnam War; it also saw extensive action in the Middle East. The SA-9 Gaskin carried four infrared-homing missiles on a turreted mount atop a four-wheeled vehicle. Its missiles were larger than the SA-7 and had more sophisticated seeker and guidance systems.

8. The first generation of American SAMs included the Army  Nike Ajax, a two-stage, liquid-fueled missile that became operational in 1953, and the rocket-boosted, ramjet-powered Navy Talos. Both used radar tracking and target acquisition and radio command guidance. The later Nike Hercules, also command-guided, had a range of 85 miles. After 1956 the Talos was supplemented by the Terrier, a radar-beam rider, and the Tartar, a semiactive radar homing missile. These were replaced in the late 1960s by the Standard semiactive radar homing system. The solid-fueled, Mach-2 Standard missiles were deployed in medium-range (MR) and two-stage extended-range (ER) versions capable, respectively, of about 15 miles and 35 miles. Within 10 years a second generation of Standard missiles doubled the range of both versions. These newer missiles contained an inertial-guidance system that, by electronically communicating with the Aegis radarfire-control system, allowed corrections to be made in mid-course before the semiactive terminal homing took over.

9. For 20 years, the most important land-based American SAM was the Hawk, a sophisticated system employing semiactive radar guidance. From the mid-1960s the Hawk provided the backbone ofU.S. surface-based air defenses in Europe and South Korea and wasexported to many allies. In Israeli use, Hawk missiles proved highly effective against low-flying aircraft. The longer-ranged Patriot missile system began entering service in 1985 as a partial replacement for the Hawk. Like the Hawk, the Patriot was semimobile; that is, the system components were not mounted permanently on vehicles and so had to be removed from their transport for firing. For target acquisition and identification, as well as for tracking and guidance, the Patriot system used a single phased-array radar, which controlled the direction of the beam by electronically varying the signals at several antennas rather than pivoting a single large antenna. The single-stage, solid-fueled Patriot missile was controlled by command guidance and employed track-via-missile homing, in which information from the radar in the missile itself was used by the launch site fire-control system.

10. The shoulder-fired Redeye, an infrared-homing missile that was alsodeployed on truck-mounted launchers, was fielded in the 1960s to provide U.S. Army units close-in protection against air attack. After 1980 the Redeye was replaced by the Stinger, a lighter system whose missile accelerated faster and whose more advanced seekerhead could detect the hot exhaust of approaching aircraft even four miles away and up to 5,000 feet in altitude.

11. Western European mobile SAM systems include the German-designed Roland, an SA-8 equivalent fired from a variety oftracked and wheeled vehicles, and the French Crotale, an SA-6 equivalent that used a combination of radar command guidance and infrared terminal homing. Both systems were widely exported. Less directly comparable to Soviet systems was the British Rapier, a short-range, semimobile system intended primarily for airfield defense. The Rapier missile was fired from a small, rotating launcher that was transported by trailer. In the initial version, deployed in the early 1970s and used with some success in 1982 in the Falklands conflict, the target aircraft was tracked by a gunner using an optical sight. A television camera in the tracker measured differences between the missile's flight path and the path to the target, and microwave radio signals issued guidance corrections. The Rapier had a combat range of one-quarter to four miles and a ceiling of 10,000 feet. Later versions used radar tracking and guidance for all-weather engagements.

12. A new generation of Soviet SAM systems entered service in the 1980s. These included the SA-10 Grumble, a Mach-6 mobile system with a 60-mile range deployed in both strategic and tactical versions; the SA-11 Gadfly, a Mach-3 semiactive radar homing system with a range of 17 miles; the SA-12 Gladiator, a track-mobile replacement of Ganef; the SA-13 Gopher, a replacement for Gaskin; and the SA-14, a shoulder-fired Grail replacement. Both Grumble and Gadfly had naval equivalents, the SA-N-6 and SA-N-7. The Gladiator might have been designed with an antimissile capability, making it an element of the antiballistic missile defense around Moscow.

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