Submarine-launched ballistic missile
A submarine-launched ballistic missile is a ballistic missile capable of being launched from submarines. Modern variants deliver multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles each of which carries a nuclear warhead and allows a single launched missile to strike several targets. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles operate in a different way from submarine-launched cruise missiles. Modern submarine-launched ballistic missiles are related to intercontinental ballistic missiles (with ranges of over 5,500 kilometres, in many cases SLBMs and ICBMs may be part of the same family of weapons; the first practical design of a submarine-based launch platform was developed by the Germans near the end of World War II involving a launch tube which contained a V-2 ballistic missile variant and was towed behind a submarine, known by the code-name Prüfstand XII. The war ended before it could be tested, but the engineers who had worked on it went on to work for the United States and for the Soviet Union on their SLBM programs.
These and other early SLBM systems required vessels to be surfaced when they fired missiles, but launch systems were adapted to allow underwater launching in the 1950-1960s. A converted Project 611 submarine launched the world's first SLBM, an R-11FM on 16 September 1955. Five additional Project V611 and AV611 Submarines became the world's first operational ballistic missile submarines with two R-11FM missiles each, entering service in 1956–57; the United States Navy worked on a sea-based variant of the US Army Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile, projecting four of the large, liquid-fueled missiles per submarine. Rear Admiral W. F. "Red" Raborn headed a Special Project Office to develop Jupiter for the Navy, beginning in late 1955. However, at the Project Nobska submarine warfare conference in 1956, physicist Edward Teller stated that a physically small one-megaton warhead could be produced for the small, solid-fueled Polaris missile, this prompted the Navy to leave the Jupiter program in December of that year.
Soon Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke concentrated all Navy strategic research on Polaris, still under Admiral Raborn's Special Project Office. All US SLBMs have been solid-fueled while all Soviet and Russian SLBMs have been liquid-fueled except for the Russian RSM-56 Bulava, which entered service in 2014; the world's first operational nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine was USS George Washington with 16 Polaris A-1 missiles, which entered service in December 1959 and conducted the first SSBN deterrent patrol November 1960 – January 1961. George Washington conducted the first successful submerged SLBM launch with a Polaris A-1 on 20 July 1960. Forty days the Soviet Union made its first successful underwater launch of a submarine ballistic missile in the White Sea, on 10 September 1960 from the same converted Project 611 submarine that first launched the R-11FM; the Soviets were only a year behind the US with their first SSBN, the ill-fated K-19 of Project 658, commissioned in November 1960.
However, the Hotel class carried only three R-13 missiles each and had to surface and raise the missile to launch. Submerged launch was not an operational capability for the Soviets until 1963, when the R-21 missile was first backfitted to Project 658 and Project 629 submarines; the Soviet Union was able to beat the U. S. in launching and testing the first SLBM with a live nuclear warhead, an R-13 that detonated in the Novaya Zemlya Test Range in the Arctic Ocean, doing so on 20 October 1961, just ten days before the gigantic 50 Mt Tsar Bomba's detonation in the same general area. The United States conducted a similar test in the Pacific Ocean on 6 May 1962, with a Polaris A-2 launched from USS Ethan Allen as part of the nuclear test series Operation Dominic; the first Soviet SSBN with 16 missiles was the Project 667A, which first entered service in 1967 with 32 boats completed by 1974. By the time the first Yankee was commissioned the US had built 41 SSBNs, nicknamed the "41 for Freedom"; the short range of the early SLBMs dictated deployment locations.
By the late 1960s the Polaris A-3 was deployed on all US SSBNs with a range of 4,600 kilometres, a great improvement on the 1,900 kilometres range of Polaris A-1. The A-3 had three warheads that landed in a pattern around a single target; the Yankee class was equipped with the R-27 Zyb missile with a range of 2,400 kilometres. The US was much more fortunate in its basing arrangements than the Soviets. Thanks to NATO and the US possession of Guam, US SSBNs were permanently forward deployed at Advanced Refit Sites in Holy Loch, Rota and Guam by the middle 1960s, resulting in short transit times to patrol areas near the Soviet Union; the SSBN facilities at the Advanced Refit Sites were austere, with only a submarine tender and floating dry dock. Converted merchant ships designated T-AKs were provided to ferry supplies to the sites. With two rotating crews per boat, about one-third of the total US force could be in a patrol area at any time; the Soviet bases, in the Murmansk area for the Atlantic and the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky area for the Pacific, required their SSBNs to make a long transit to their mid-ocean patrol areas to hold the continental United States at risk.
This resulted in only a small percentage of the Soviet force occupying patrol areas at any time, an
SM-65 Atlas
The SM-65 Atlas was the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. It was built for the U. S. Air Force by Convair Division of General Dynamics at the Kearny Mesa assembly plant north of San Diego. Atlas became operational as an ICBM in October 1959 and was used as a first stage for satellite launch vehicles for half a century; the Atlas missile's warhead was over 100 times more powerful than the bomb dropped over Nagasaki in 1945. An initial development contract was given to Consolidated Vultee Aircraft on 16 January 1951 for what was called MX-1593, it had a low priority. The 1953 testing of the first dry fuel H-bomb in the Soviet Union led to the project being accelerated; the initial design completed by Convair in 1953 was larger than the missile that entered service. Estimated warhead weight was lowered from 8,000 lb to 3,000 lb based on favorable U. S. nuclear warhead tests in early 1954, on 14 May 1954 the Atlas program was formally given the highest national priority.
A major development and test contract was awarded to Convair on 14 January 1955 for a 10-foot diameter missile to weigh about 250,000 lb. Atlas development was controlled by the Air Force's Western Development Division, WDD part of the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division. Contracts for warhead and propulsion were handled separately by WDD; the first successful flight of a instrumented Atlas missile to full range occurred 28 November 1958. Atlas ICBMs were deployed operationally from 31 October 1959 to 12 April 1965. On 18 December 1958, the launch of Atlas 10B sent the missile into orbit around the Earth carrying the "SCORE" communications payload. Atlas 10B/SCORE, at 8,750 lb was the heaviest man-made object in orbit, the first voice relay satellite, the first man-made object in space visible to the naked eye due to the large, mirror-polished stainless steel tank; this was the first flight in. Many retired Atlas ICBMs would be used as launch vehicles, most with an added spin-stabilized solid rocket motor upper stage for polar orbit military payloads.
Before its military use ended in 1965, Atlas had placed four Project Mercury astronauts in orbit and was becoming the foundation for a family of successful space launch vehicles, most notably Atlas Agena and Atlas Centaur. Mergers led to the acquisition of the Atlas Centaur line by Lockheed Martin, which became part of United Launch Alliance. Today Lockheed Martin and ULA support a new Atlas rocket family based on the larger "Atlas V" which still uses the unique and efficient Centaur upper stage. Atlas V stage one is powered by a Russian RD-180 oxygen/kerosene engine and uses conventional aluminum isogrid tanks, rather than the thin-wall, pressure-stabilized stainless steel tanks of the original Convair Atlas. Payload weights have increased along with launch vehicle weights over the years, so the current Atlas V family serves many of the same types of commercial, DoD, planetary missions as earlier Atlas Centaurs. Shortly before his death, John von Neumann headed the top secret von Neumann ICBM committee.
Its purpose was to decide on the feasibility of building an ICBM large enough to carry a thermonuclear weapon. Von Neumann had long argued that while the technical obstacles were indeed formidable, they could be overcome in time. Events were proving him right; the weapons had become smaller, diode–transistor logic enabled the construction of compact guidance computers. The committee approved a "radical reorganization" and speeding up of the Atlas program. Atlas was informally classified as a "stage-and-a-half" rocket. At staging, the booster engines would be shut off and a series of mechanical and hydraulic mechanisms would close the plumbing lines to them; the booster section would be released by a series of hydraulic clamps and slide off the missile. From there on, the sustainer and verniers would operate by themselves. Booster staging took place at two minutes into launch, although the exact timing could vary depending on the model of Atlas as well as the particular mission being flown; the booster engine consisted of two large thrust chambers.
On the Atlas A/B/C, one turbopump assembly powered both booster engines. On the Atlas D, the booster engines had separate pump assemblies. On the Atlas E/F, each booster turbopump got its own gas generator. Space launcher variants of the Atlas used the MA-5 propulsion system with twin turbopumps on each booster engine, driven by a common gas generator; the boosters were more powerful than the sustainer engine and did most of the lifting for the first two minutes of flight. In addition to pitch and yaw control, they could perform roll control in the event of a vernier failure; the sustainer engine on all Atlas variants consisted of a single thrust chamber with its own turbopump and gas generator, two small pressure-fed vernier engines. The verniers provided final velocity trim; the total sea level thrust of all five thrust chambers was 360,000 lbf for a standard Atlas
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
UGM-27 Polaris
The UGM-27 Polaris missile was a two-stage solid-fueled nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missile. The United States Navy's first SLBM, it served from 1961 to 1996; the Polaris project was created to replace the solid-fueled Jupiter S project, approved in 1956 to replace the liquid-fueled SM-78 and PGM-19 Jupiter missiles. In December 1956, the United States Navy awarded Polaris development contracts to Lockheed Corporation and Aerojet Rocketdyne; the Polaris missile was designed to be used for second strike countervalue as part of the Navy's contribution to the United States arsenal of nuclear weapons, replacing the Regulus cruise missile. Known as a Fleet Ballistic Missile, the Polaris was first launched from the Cape Canaveral, missile test base on January 7, 1960. Following the Polaris Sales Agreement in 1963, Polaris missiles were carried on British Royal Navy submarines between 1968 and the mid-1990s. Plans to equip the Italian Navy with the missile ended in the mid-60s, after several successful test launches carried out onboard the Italian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Despite the successful launching tests, the plan was abandoned due to the completion of initial SSBN vessels. Nonetheless, the Italian government set out to develop an indigenous missile called Alfa; the program was successful, but was halted by Italy's ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the failure of the NATO Multilateral Force. The Polaris missile was replaced on 31 of the 41 original SSBNs in the U. S. Navy by the MIRV-capable Poseidon missile beginning in 1972. During the 1980s, these missiles were replaced on 12 of these submarines by the Trident I missile; the 10 George Washington- and Ethan Allen-class SSBNs retained Polaris A-3 until 1980 because their missile tubes were not large enough to accommodate Poseidon. With USS Ohio beginning sea trials in 1980, these submarines were disarmed and redesignated as attack submarines to avoid exceeding the SALT II strategic arms treaty limits; the Polaris missile program's complexity led to the development of new project management techniques, including the Program Evaluation and Review Technique to replace the simpler Gantt chart methodology.
At the start of the Second World War, nearly every major world military force, involved in the war had at least developed rough ideas of a rocket program. It is important to note that at this time the distinction between rockets and missiles was this: rockets traveled over a fixed trajectory and missiles could be guided to their destination. Rockets of all shapes and sizes were being implemented in battlefields around the globe; the Soviet Union deployed rockets such as the Katyusha, which were fired from a mobile launcher in waves of up to nearly 50 small, unguided rockets, the Japanese were implementing rockets that would be used on the front lines. Rockets such as the Katyusha could fire at targets within three miles, while the first Japanese rockets were only valuable for targets less than five-hundred feet away; the initial version of the Japanese kamikaze planes were powered by rockets. These wooden suicide planes did not provide the Japanese forces with a reliable weapon, by 1945 the kamikaze gliders were being used in combat, no matter how ineffective they may have been.
British forces, had begun developments on anti-aircraft rockets of their own, which proved effective as early as 1941. Soon after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the United States joined arms in the race for rockets borrowing much of its initial products from the British armed forces; the United States rocket program began testing both rockets and missiles, by 1945, the Army was investing $150 million a year, while the Navy was spending $1.2 billion. Despite these efforts from the major contributing forces in the war, German scientists excelled at mastering the largest and most advanced weapons. One of which, the German V-2 rocket, would become the blueprint for all of the serious global missile programs to come; as the United States Army continued to make steady advancements in its rocket and missile programs it became apparent that if the program wished to keep up with its own rapid growth, as well as with the rest of the world, it would need more space than what was available. On October 28, 1949, Alabama, was chosen based on its promising location and easy access to resources to be the new home to the American program.
By the end of 1950, the Redstone Arsenal was operational and took on the new designation as the Ordnance Guided Missile Center. The Polaris missile replaced an earlier plan to create a submarine-based missile force based on a derivative of the U. S. Army Jupiter Intermediate-range ballistic missile. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke appointed Rear Admiral W. F. "Red" Raborn as head of a Special Project Office to develop Jupiter for the Navy in late 1955. The Jupiter missile's large diameter was a product of the need to keep the length short enough to fit in a reasonably-sized submarine. At the seminal Project Nobska conference in 1956, with Admiral Burke present, nuclear physicist Edward Teller stated that a physically small one-megaton warhead could be produced for Polaris within a few years, this prompted Burke to leave the Jupiter program and concentrate on Polaris in December of that year. Polaris was spearheaded by the Special Project Office's Missile Branch under Rear Admiral Roderick Osgood Middleton, is still under the Special Project Office.
Admiral Burke was instrumental in determining the size of the Polaris submarine force, suggesting that 40-45 submarines with 16 missiles each would be sufficient. The number of Polaris submarines was fixed
AGM-12 Bullpup
The AGM-12 Bullpup is an air-to-ground missile, used on the A-4 Skyhawk, A-6 Intruder, F-105 Thunderchief, F-4 Phantom II, F-8 Crusader, P-3 Orion in U. S. service and on numerous other Allied aircraft. It has been superseded by more advanced weapons, notably the AGM-62 AGM-65 Maverick; the Bullpup was the first mass-produced air-surface command guided missile, first deployed by the United States Navy in 1959 as the ASM-N-7, until it was redesignated the AGM-12B in 1962. It was developed as a result of experiences in the Korean War where US airpower had great difficulty in destroying targets which required precise aiming and were heavily defended, such as bridges; the Bullpup had a Manual Command Line Of Sight guidance system with roll-stabilization. In flight the pilot or weapons operator tracked the Bullpup by watching a flare on the back of the missile and used a control joystick to steer it toward the target using radio signals, it was powered by a solid fuel rocket motor, carried a 250 lb warhead.
After launching the Bullpup, best accuracy was maintained by continuing to fly the same track, so that the pilot could sight down the smoke trail and steer the missile from directly behind as much as possible. One problem discovered by pilots in Vietnam was that gunners on the ground could fire at the smoke trail of the missile's flare and have a good chance of hitting the aircraft that had launched—and was still guiding—the missile. Thus, to try to protect their own aircraft, the pilot would "jig" off of the missile's path and avoid the anti-aircraft fire. Versions of the missile included upgrades such as a larger 1000 lb warhead, improved rocket motors, improved guidance—the latter developed as part of the GAM-79 White Lance project for an improved, enlarged Bullpup for the US Air Force—and, in one late version, the ability to carry a nuclear warhead pioneered as part of the GAM-79 project; the weapon was phased out of US service in the 1970s but was still used by other countries much later.
Some militaries still use some as inert practice weapons. AustraliaRoyal Australian Air Force DenmarkRoyal Danish Air Force GreeceHellenic Air Force IsraelIsrael Defense Forces NorwayRoyal Norwegian Air Force Taiwan Republic of China Air Force TurkeyTurkish Air Force United KingdomRoyal Air Force Royal Navy United StatesUnited States Air Force United States Navy Kh-23 – a Soviet command-guided missile inspired by the Bullpup AS-20 – similar French missile developed in the late 1950s AJ 168 Martel missile – contemporary Anglo-French missile with TV guidance Martin Pescador MP-1000 – an Argentinian guided missile with similar guidance system Related lists List of military aircraft of the United States List of missiles by nation Designation Systems. Net website Federation of American Scientists webpage
Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle
A multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle is a missile payload containing several warheads, each capable of being aimed to hit a different target. The concept is invariably associated with intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying thermonuclear warheads if not being limited to them. By contrast, a unitary warhead is a single warhead on a single missile. An intermediate case is the multiple reentry vehicle missile which carries several warheads which are dispersed but not individually aimed. Only China, Russian Federation and United States are confirmed to possess functional MIRV missile systems. India and Israel are suspected to be developing or possessing MIRVs; the first true MIRV design was the Minuteman III, introduced in 1970, which held three smaller W62 warheads of about 170 kilotons in place of the single 1.2 megaton W56 used in the earlier versions of this missile. The smaller power of the warhead was offset by increasing the accuracy of the system, allowing it to attack the same hard targets as the larger, less accurate, W56.
The MMIII was introduced to address the Soviet construction of an anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow. The Soviets responded by adding MIRV to their R-36 design, first with three warheads in 1975, up to ten in versions. While the United States phased out the use of MIRVs in 2014 to comply with New START, Russia continues to develop new missile designs using the technology; the introduction of MIRV led to a major change in the strategic balance. With one warhead per missile, it was conceivable that one could build a defense that used missiles to attack individual warheads. Any increase in missile fleet by the enemy could be countered by a similar increase in interceptors. With MIRV, a single new enemy missile meant that multiple interceptors would have to be built, meaning that it was much less expensive to increase the attack than the defense; this cost-exchange ratio was so biased towards the attacker that the concept of mutual assured destruction became the leading concept in strategic planning and ABM systems were limited in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to avoid a massive arms race.
The military purpose of a MIRV is fourfold: Enhance first-strike proficiency for strategic forces. Providing greater target damage for a given thermonuclear weapon payload. Several small and lower yield warheads cause much more target damage area than a single warhead alone; this in turn reduces the number of missiles and launch facilities required for a given destruction level - much the same as the purpose of a cluster munition. With single warhead missiles, one missile must be launched for each target. By contrast, with a MIRV warhead the post-boost stage can dispense the warheads against multiple targets across a broad area. Reduces the effectiveness of an anti-ballistic missile system that relies on intercepting individual warheads. While a MIRV attacking missile can have multiple warheads, interceptors may have only one warhead per missile. Thus, in both a military and an economic sense, MIRVs render ABM systems less effective, as the costs of maintaining a workable defense against MIRVs would increase, requiring multiple defensive missiles for each offensive one.
Decoy reentry vehicles can be used alongside actual warheads to minimize the chances of the actual warheads being intercepted before they reach their targets. A system that destroys the missile earlier in its trajectory is not affected by this but is more difficult, thus more expensive to implement. MIRV land-based ICBMs were considered destabilizing because they tended to put a premium on striking first; the world's first MIRV—US Minuteman III missile of 1970—threatened to increase the US's deployable nuclear arsenal and thus the possibility that it would have enough bombs to destroy all of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons and negate any significant retaliation. On the US feared the Soviet's MIRVs because Soviet missiles had a greater throw-weight and could thus put more warheads on each missile than the US could. For example, the US MIRVs might have increased their warhead per missile count by a factor of 6 while the Soviets increased theirs by a factor of 10. Furthermore, the US had a much smaller proportion of its nuclear arsenal in ICBMs than the Soviets.
Bombers could not be outfitted with MIRVs. Thus the US did not seem to have as much potential for MIRV usage as the Soviets. However, the US had a larger number of Submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which could be outfitted with MIRVs, helped offset the ICBM disadvantage, it is because of their first-strike capability that land-based MIRVs were banned under the START II agreement. START II was ratified by the Russian Duma on 14 April 2000, but Russia withdrew from the treaty in 2002 after the US withdrew from the ABM treaty. In a MIRV, the main rocket motor pushes a "bus" into a free-flight suborbital ballistic flight path. After the boost phase the bus maneuvers using small on-board rocket motors and a computerised inertial guidance system, it takes up a ballistic trajectory that will deliver a reentry vehicle containing a warhead to a target, releases a warhead on that trajectory. It maneuvers to a different trajectory, releasing another warhead, repeats the process for all warheads; the precise technical details are guarded military secrets, to hinder any d
RIM-2 Terrier
The Convair RIM-2 Terrier was a two-stage medium-range naval surface-to-air missile, was among the earliest surface-to-air missiles to equip United States Navy ships. It underwent significant upgrades while in service, starting with a beam-riding system with 10-nautical-mile range at a speed of Mach 1.8, ending as a semi-active radar homing system with a range of 40 nmi at speeds as high as Mach 3. It was replaced in service by the RIM-67 Standard ER. Terrier has been used as a sounding rocket; the Terrier was a development of the Bumblebee Project, the United States Navy's effort to develop a surface-to-air missile to provide a middle layer of defense against air attack. It was test launched from USS Mississippi on January 28, 1953, first deployed operationally on the Boston-class cruisers and Canberra in the mid-1950s, with Canberra being the first to achieve operational status June 15, 1956, its US Navy designation was SAM-N-7 until 1963 when it was re-designated RIM-2. For a brief time during the mid-1950s the United States Marine Corps had two Terrier battalions equipped with specially modified twin sea launchers for land use that fired the SAM-N-7.
The Terrier was the first surface-to-air missile operational with the USMC. The launchers were reloaded by a special vehicle; the Terrier used radar beam-riding guidance, forward aerodynamic controls, a conventional warhead. It had a top speed of only Mach 1.8, a range of only 10 nmi, was only useful against subsonic targets. The Terrier had a launch thrust of 23 kN, weight of 1,392 kg, its original dimensions were a diameter of 340 mm, a length of 8.08 m, a fin span of 1.59 m. Cost per missile in 1957 was an estimated $60,000. Before it was in widespread service it was seeing major improvements; the RIM-2C, named the Terrier BT-3 was introduced in 1958. The forward control fins were replaced with fixed strakes, the tail became the control surface; the BT-3 had a new motor, featured extended range, Mach 3 speed, better maneuverability. The RIM-2D Terrier BT-3A entered service in 1962 with a W30 1kt nuclear warhead, but all other variants used a 218 lb controlled-fragmentation warhead; the RIM-2E introduced semi-active radar homing, for greater effectiveness against low-flying targets.
The final version, the RIM-2F, used a new motor. The Terrier was the primary missile system of most US Navy cruisers and guided missile frigates built during the 1960s, it could be installed on much smaller ships than the longer-ranged RIM-8 Talos. A Terrier installation consisted of the Mk 10 twin-arm launcher with a 40-round rear-loading magazine, but some ships had extended magazines with 60 or 80 rounds, the installation in Boston and Canberra used a bottom-loading magazine of 72 rounds; the French Navy's Masurca missile was developed with some technology provided by the USN from Terrier. The Terrier was replaced by the extended range RIM-67 Standard missile; the RIM-67 offered the range of the much larger RIM-8 Talos in a missile the size of the Terrier. Terrier has been used as a first stage in a sounding rocket, for conducting high-altitude research; the Terrier can be equipped with various upper stages, like the Asp, the TE-416 Tomahawk or the Orion. The booster served as the basis for the MIM-3 Nike Ajax booster, larger but otherwise similar, which has seen widespread use in sounding rockets.
On April 19, 1972, a Terrier missile fired by USS Sterett shot down a North Vietnamese Air Force MiG-17F in the Battle of Dong Hoi. Marina MilitareItalian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi Andrea Doria-class cruiser Italian cruiser Vittorio Veneto Royal Netherlands NavyHNLMS De Zeven Provinciën United States Navy USS Norton Sound RIM-24 Tartar Terasca General Dynamics SAM-N-7/RIM-2 Terrier "US Marines Terrier" YouTube video
