History
The Rb 05A was developed as an air-to-surface missile for the AJ 37 Viggen in the late 1960s. The supersonic speed was deemed necessary to reduce the threat of surface-to-air missiles. The missile would usually be launched after a high-speed attack run on very low altitude and climb to 400m for launch. The aircraft would immediately descend again and the pilot guiding the missile optically with a joystick.
Guidance commands are transmitted via a microwave transmission link. Tracking flares on the missile aid the pilot in guiding the missile on target.
It was later discovered that the missile was effective in air-to-air against non-maneuvering aircraft as well.
A TV-guided variant Rb 05B was proposed to the Swedish Air Force in the early 1970s, but was turned down in favor of the AGM-65 Maverick/Rb 75 instead.
Read more about this topic: Rb 05
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)