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:
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)