Extract
Missiles on a Cruise.
Encouraged by America's successful use of cruise missiles on several occasions in the last decade, other major powers are either developing their own or increasing their spending on this weapon category. There is, meanwhile, a growing fear that rogue nations and terrorist groups may also develop and employ such devices.
One may wonder why the cruise missile did not develop quicker after the Second World War particularly with regard to the way the Fieseler Fi-103 or V-1 `flying bomb' of 1942 managed to terrorise populations, especially in Britain. The main reason is that the navigation systems of the time were too inaccurate and drifted rather badly given the long flight times of the German missile. Thus, in the early post-WW II period, the West instead concentrated on ballistic missiles, which offered immunity from interception and better inertially computed accuracy due to their shorter flight times (and indeed Hitler had started to field the rocket-powered V-2, thankfully only in the latter part of the war). The Soviet Union, though, developed cruise missiles to deal with mobile US Navy targets. The Styx affair of 1967 (in which the Israeli destroyer Elat was sunk by three missiles) sparked off Western developmental work on long-range anti-ship missiles. The main US Navy product was the McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) AGM/RGM/UGM-84A Harpoon, which entered service in 1979. The US Air Force saw the cruise missile as a means to extend the usefulness of the B-52. This led to the nuclear-armed Boeing AGM-86B Alcm (Air-Launched Cruise Missile), of which the B-52 can carry eight internally and twelve externally. Operational capability was reached in late 1982. When the line was closed in 1986, a total of 1739 Alcms had been built. In the same year, Boeing began converting some AGM-86Bs into conventionally-armed AGM-86Cs and the type was redesignated Calcm. The US Navy Tomahawk cruise missile is now a Raytheon programme, but it started life with Convair (General Dynamics). Production began in 1980 and initial operati...See the full content of this document
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