missile

An optically tracked anti-armour missile launched from a tube on top of an army vehicle. They are used to attack heavily armoured vehicles, such as tanks.

Missiles awaiting their final checks before being loaded onto a transporter and delivered to a military base. A certain amount of preliminary electronic programming is carried out by the manufacturer, but the operational programming will be done by military personnel.

Rocket-propelled weapon, which may be nuclear-armed (see nuclear warfare). Modern missiles are often classified as surface-to-surface missiles (SSM), air-to-air missiles (AAM), surface-to-air missiles (SAM), or air-to-surface missiles (ASM). A cruise missile is in effect a pilotless, computer-guided aircraft; it can be sea-launched from submarines or surface ships, or launched from the air or the ground.

Rocket-propelled weapons were first used by the Chinese about AD 1100, and were encountered in the 18th century by the British forces. The rocket missile was then re-invented by William Congreve in England around 1805, and remained in use with various armies in the 19th century. The first wartime use of a long-range missile was against England in World War II, by the jet-powered German V1 (Vergeltungswaffe, ‘revenge weapon’ or Flying Bomb), a monoplane (wingspan about 6 m/18 ft, length 8.5 m/26 ft); the first rocket-propelled missile with a preset guidance system was the German V2, also launched by Germany against Britain in World War II.

Modern missiles are also classified as strategic or tactical: strategic missiles are the large, long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs, capable of reaching targets over 5,500 km/3,400 mi), and tactical missiles are the short-range weapons intended for use in limited warfare (with a range under 1,100 km/680 mi).

Not all missiles are large. There are many missiles that are small enough to be carried by one person. The Stinger, for example, is a surface-to-air missile fired by a single soldier from a shoulder-held tube. Most fighter aircraft are equipped with missiles to use against enemy aircraft or against ground targets. Other small missiles are launched from a type of truck, called a MLRS (multiple-launch rocket system), that can move around a battlefield. Ship-to-ship missiles like the Exocet have proved very effective in naval battles.

The vast majority of missiles have systems that guide them to their target. The guidance system may consist of radar and computers, either in the missile or on the ground. These devices track the missile and determine the correct direction and distance required for it to hit its target. In the radio-guidance system, the computer is on the ground, and guidance signals are radio-transmitted to the missile. In the inertial guidance system, the computer is on board the missile. Some small missiles have heat-seeking devices fitted to their noses to seek out the engines of enemy aircraft, or are guided by laser light reflected from the target. Others (called TOW missiles) are guided by signals sent along wires that trail behind the missile in flight.

Outside the industrialized countries, 22 states had active ballistic-missile programmes by 1989, and 17 had deployed these weapons: Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, South Korea, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria, and Taiwan. Non-nuclear short-range missiles were used during the Iran–Iraq War 1980–88 against Iraqi cities.

Battlefield missiles used in the 1991 Gulf War included antitank missiles and short-range attack missiles. NATO announced in 1990 that it was phasing out ground-launched nuclear battlefield missiles, and these are being replaced by types of tactical air-to-surface missile (TASM), also with nuclear warheads.

In the Falklands conflict in 1982, small, conventionally armed sea-skimming missiles were used (the French Exocet) against British ships by the Argentine forces, and similar small missiles have been used against aircraft and ships elsewhere.