Posted on 06/30/2016 4:54:59 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Boeing’s Harpoon Missile System is an all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship weapon that is extremely versatile. The U.S. started developing the Harpoon in 1965 to target surfaced submarines up to 24 miles away, hence its name “Harpoon,” a weapon to kill “whales,” a naval slang term used to describe submarines.
It was a slow moving project at first until the Six-Day War of 1967 between Israel and Egypt. During the war, Egypt sunk the Israel destroyer INS Eilat from 14 miles away with Soviet-made Styx anti-ship missiles launched from a tiny patrol boat. It was the first ship in history to be sunk by anti-ship missiles.
The surface-to-surface destruction shocked senior U.S. Navy officers; after all, it was the height of the Cold War, and the weapon indirectly alerted the U.S. of Soviet capabilities at sea. In 1970 Admiral Elmo Zumwalt—then Chief of Naval Operations—accelerated the Harpoon project, strategically adapting it for deployment from air and sea. Seven years later, the first Harpoon was successfully deployed.
May 1992 air-to-air view of an F-16 Fighting Falcon equipped with an AGM-84 Harpoon all-weather anti-ship missile over Eglin Air Force Base. USAF photo by Cindy Farmer.
Today, the U.S. and its allies—more than 30 countries around the world—are the primary users of the weapon. 2017 marks its 50th anniversary, and it’s only getting better with age. Over the decades, the missile has been updated to include navigation technology, such as GPS, Inertial navigation system (INS), and other electronics to make it more accurate and versatile against ships and a variety of land-based targets.
This Boeing video describes the incredible history behind the Harpoon Missile System and its evolution throughout the years.
Not true. The Germans developed anti-ship guided missiles in WWII and sank the Italian battleship Roma.
Technically the device that sank the Roma was a guided free falling bomb not a missile.
True, the Fritz X was a free-faller, but guided non-the-less. The Henschel Hs 293 was a guided missile and sank the British sloop Egret. So that counts...
The Harpoon is short ranged, slow, and old. Compare it to the BrahMos.
Dunno if it could cold be effective in today’s environment.
The US Navy needs to update the missile. It looks to be far behind.
http://aermech.com/harpoon-anti-ship-misile-vs-brahmos-supersonic-cruise-missilewiki/
If they don’t when they get in a shooting war with the Chinese in the South China Sea it is going to cost us in steel and blood.
Something like Brahmos vs Harpoon is an oranges vs apples comparison. The Harpoon can be deployed by pretty much any surface vessel, sub or aircraft with just electronics modifications.For example, some Indian Jaguars have been equipped with the Harpoon while two Type-209 submarines will also receive the missiles.
Can the same thing be done with the Brahmos? The only Indian aircraft that can “carry” the Brahmos is the SU-30. Work on a smaller version is ongoing, but that’s the basic problem with the missile compared with smaller weapons.
I’d still rather have a Mach 3 seaskimmer with a 300+ KM range than a subsonic one with a 100 KM range.
Heck, the biggest problem with the Mach 3 missile is that it might go through the target before detonating.
As for portability, the Sov, er, Russkis have containerized similar missiles. With these, a nation could turn container ships into arsenal ships.
All things considered, the USN seems to have shown a remarkable lack of imagination in the development of its anti-ship missiles, comparable to the pre-WWII era where it ignored the rise of the IJN’s naval aviation.
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