The Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk (Homing All the Way Killer) is a U.S. medium range surface-to-air missile. The Hawk was initially designed to destroy aircraft and was later adapted to destroy other missiles in flight. The missile entered service in 1960, and a program of extensive upgrades has kept it from becoming obsolete. It was superseded by the MIM-104 Patriot in United States Army service by 1994. It was finally phased out of U.S. service in 2002, the last U.S. users, the U.S. Marine Corps replacing it with the man-portable infrared-guided visual range FIM-92 Stinger. The missile was also produced outside the US in Western Europe, Japan and Iran.
Although the U.S. never used the Hawk in combat, it has been employed numerous times by other nations. Approximately 40,000 of the missiles were produced. Jane's reported that the original system's single shot kill probability was 0.56; I-Hawk improved this to 0.85.
Similar Soviet systems are the SA-3 and SA-6.
Read more about MIM-23 Hawk: Development, Description, Missiles, Radars, Country Specific Modifications, History, Operators
Famous quotes containing the word hawk:
“The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)