Design
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 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 often heavily defended, such as bridges.
Although they could hit targets fairly accurately, pilots found that the warhead of the AGM-12 was not very effective against the massive concrete structures of large bridges in North Vietnam. However, in at least one specific instance, the Bullpup proved its value when a pilot guided one into the cave entrance of a large ammo storage facility dug into a mountain. Previous attacks with conventional, unguided ("dumb") bombs had been ineffective against the mountain surface, but when the Bullpup missile entered the cave and detonated, it set off a huge secondary explosion of the stored ammo.
Read more about this topic: AGM-12 Bullpup
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