![Bofors-aa-gun-algeria](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Bofors-aa-gun-algeria.jpg)
Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the
battlespace
Battlespace or battle-space is a term used to signify a unified military strategy to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including air, information, land, sea, cyber and outer space to achieve military ...
response to
aerial warfare
Aerial warfare is the use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare. Aerial warfare includes bombers attacking enemy installations or a concentration of enemy troops or strategic targets; fighter aircraft battling for control o ...
, defined by
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".
[AAP-6] It includes
surface based, subsurface (
submarine launched), and air-based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements, and passive measures (e.g.
barrage balloon
A barrage balloon is a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe collision risk to aircraft, making the attacker's approach more difficult. Early barra ...
s). It may be used to protect naval, ground, and air forces in any location. However, for most countries, the main effort has tended to be
homeland defence
Homeland defense (HD) is the protection of a territory, sovereignty, domestic population, and critical infrastructure against external threats and aggression. (Definition will be incorporated into JP 3-26Definition deferred to ''Homeland Defense, J ...
. NATO refers to airborne air defence as counter-air and naval air defence as anti-aircraft warfare.
Missile defence
Missile defense is a system, weapon, or technology involved in the detection, tracking, interception, and also the destruction of attacking missiles. Conceived as a defense against nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), ...
is an extension of air defence, as are initiatives to adapt air defence to the task of intercepting any projectile in flight.
In some countries, such as Britain and Germany during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, and modern NATO and the United States, ground-based air defence and air defence aircraft have been under integrated command and control. However, while overall air defence may be for homeland defence (including military facilities), forces in the field, wherever they are, provide their own defences against air threats.
Until the 1950s, guns firing ballistic munitions ranging from 7.62 mm (.30 in) to 152.4 mm (6 in) were the standard weapons; guided missiles then became dominant, except at the very shortest ranges (as with
close-in weapon system
A close-in weapon system (CIWS ) is a point-defense weapon system for detecting and destroying short-range incoming missiles and enemy aircraft which have penetrated the outer defenses, typically mounted on a naval ship. Nearly all classes of ...
s, which typically use
rotary autocannons or, in very modern systems, surface-to-air adaptations of short-range
air-to-air missile
The newest and the oldest member of Rafael's Python family of AAM for comparisons, Python-5 (displayed lower-front) and Shafrir-1 (upper-back)
An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying a ...
s, often combined in one system with rotary cannons).
Terminology
The term "air defence" was probably first used by Britain when
Air Defence of Great Britain
The Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB) was a RAF command comprising substantial army and RAF elements responsible for the air defence of the British Isles. It lasted from 1925, following recommendations that the RAF take control of homeland air ...
(ADGB) was created as a
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
command in 1925
vidence from a WW1 RPPC shows the term Air Defences was in use by 1916. The rear of the WW1 postcard is annotated with "Sergeants of the No.1 Anti-Aircraft Coy London Air Defences (S.W.) Feb 20/1916 However, arrangements in the UK were also called 'anti-aircraft', abbreviated as ''AA'', a term that remained in general use into the 1950s. After the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
it was sometimes prefixed by 'Light' or 'Heavy' (LAA or HAA) to classify a type of gun or unit. Nicknames for anti-aircraft guns include "AA", "AAA" or "triple-A" (
abbreviation
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
s of "anti-aircraft artillery"), ''flak'' (from the German), "ack-ack" (from the
spelling alphabet used by the British for voice transmission of "AA"); and "archie" (a World War I British term probably coined by
Amyas Borton
Air Vice Marshal Amyas Eden Borton, (20 September 1886 – 15 August 1969) was a pilot and commander in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War and a senior commander in the Royal Air Force during the 1920s. He saw active service on th ...
, and believed to derive via the
Royal Flying Corps
"Through Adversity to the Stars"
, colors =
, colours_label =
, march =
, mascot =
, anniversaries =
, decorations ...
, from the
music-hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...
comedian
George Robey
Sir George Edward Wade, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (20 September 1869 – 29 November 1954),James Harding (music writer), Harding, James"Robey, George" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University P ...
's line "Archibald, certainly not!").
NATO defines anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) as "measures taken to defend a maritime force against attacks by airborne weapons launched from aircraft, ships, submarines and land-based sites".
In some armies the term ''All-Arms Air Defence'' (AAAD) is used for air defence by nonspecialist troops. Other terms from the late 20th century include "ground based air defence" (GBAD) with related terms "
short range air defense" (SHORAD) and
man-portable air-defense system
Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) are portable surface-to-air missiles. They are guided weapons and are a threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters.
Overview
MANPADS were developed in the 1950s to provide military ...
(MANPADS). Anti-aircraft missiles are variously called
surface-to-air missile
A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...
, abbreviated and pronounced "SAM" and surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW). Examples are the
RIM-66 Standard
The RIM-66 Standard MR (SM-1MR/SM-2MR) is a medium-range surface-to-air missile (SAM), with a secondary role as an anti-ship missile, originally developed for the United States Navy (USN). A member of the Standard Missile family of weapons, the ...
,
Raytheon Standard Missile 6, or the
MBDA Aster
The Aster 15 and Aster 30 are a Franco-Italian family of all-weather, vertical launch surface-to-air missiles.[Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...](_blank)
: Противовозду́шная оборо́на), a literal translation of "anti-air defence", abbreviated as PVO. In Russian, the AA systems are called ''zenitnye'' (i.e., 'pointing to
zenith
The zenith (, ) is an imaginary point directly "above" a particular location, on the celestial sphere. "Above" means in the vertical direction (plumb line) opposite to the gravity direction at that location (nadir). The zenith is the "highest" ...
') systems (guns, missiles etc.). In French, air defence is called DCA (''Défense contre les aéronefs'', ''aéronef'' being the generic term for all kinds of airborne threats (aeroplane, airship, balloon, missile, rocket).
The maximum distance at which a gun or missile can engage an aircraft is an important figure. However, many different definitions are used but unless the same definition is used, performance of different guns or missiles cannot be compared. For AA guns only the ascending part of the trajectory can be usefully used. One term is "ceiling", the maximum ceiling being the height a projectile would reach if fired vertically, not practically useful in itself as few AA guns are able to fire vertically, and the maximum fuse duration may be too short, but potentially useful as a standard to compare different weapons.
The British adopted "effective ceiling", meaning the altitude at which a gun could deliver a series of shells against a moving target; this could be constrained by maximum fuse running time as well as the gun's capability. By the late 1930s the British definition was "that height at which a directly approaching target at can be engaged for 20 seconds before the gun reaches 70 degrees elevation". However, effective ceiling for heavy AA guns was affected by non-ballistic factors:
* The maximum running time of the fuse, this set the maximum usable time of flight.
* The capability of fire control instruments to determine target height at long range.
* The precision of the cyclic rate of fire, the fuse length had to be calculated and set for where the target would be at the time of flight after firing, to do this meant knowing exactly when the round would fire.
General description
The essence of air defence is to detect hostile aircraft and destroy them. The critical issue is to hit a target moving in three-dimensional space; an attack must not only match these three coordinates, but must do so at the time the target is at that position. This means that projectiles either have to be guided to hit the target, or aimed at the predicted position of the target at the time the projectile reaches it, taking into account the speed and direction of both the target and the projectile.
Throughout the 20th century, air defence was one of the fastest-evolving areas of military technology, responding to the evolution of aircraft and exploiting technology such as radar, guided missiles and computing (initially electromechanical analogue computing from the 1930s on, as with equipment described below). Improvements were made to sensors, technical fire control, weapons, and command and control. At the start of the 20th century these were either very primitive or non-existent.
Initially sensors were optical and acoustic devices developed during World War I and continued into the 1930s, but were quickly superseded by radar, which in turn was supplemented by
optronics
Optoelectronics (or optronics) is the study and application of electronic devices and systems that find, detect and control light, usually considered a sub-field of photonics. In this context, ''light'' often includes invisible forms of radiatio ...
in the 1980s.
Command and control remained primitive until the late 1930s, when Britain created an integrated system for ADGB that linked the ground-based air defence of the British Army's
Anti-Aircraft Command
Anti-Aircraft Command (AA Command, or "Ack-Ack Command") was a British Army command of the Second World War that controlled the Territorial Army anti-aircraft artillery and searchlight formations and units defending the United Kingdom.
Origin
...
, although field-deployed air defence relied on less sophisticated arrangements. NATO later called these arrangements an "air defence ground environment", defined as "the network of ground radar sites and command and control centres within a specific theatre of operations which are used for the tactical control of air defence operations".
Rules of Engagement are critical to prevent air defences engaging friendly or neutral aircraft. Their use is assisted but not governed by
identification friend or foe
Identification, friend or foe (IFF) is an identification system designed for command and control. It uses a transponder that listens for an ''interrogation'' signal and then sends a ''response'' that identifies the broadcaster. IFF systems usual ...
(IFF) electronic devices originally introduced during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. While these rules originate at the highest authority, different rules can apply to different types of air defence covering the same area at the same time. AAAD usually operates under the tightest rules.
NATO calls these rules Weapon Control Orders (WCO), they are:
* ''weapons free'': weapons may be fired at any target not positively recognised as friendly.
* ''weapons tight'': weapons may be fired only at targets recognised as hostile.
* ''weapons hold'': weapons may only be fired in self-defence or in response to a formal order.
Until the 1950s, guns firing ballistic munitions were the standard weapon; guided missiles then became dominant, except at the very shortest ranges. However, the type of shell or warhead and its fuzing and, with missiles the guidance arrangement, were and are varied. Targets are not always easy to destroy; nonetheless, damaged aircraft may be forced to abort their mission and, even if they manage to return and land in friendly territory, may be out of action for days or permanently. Ignoring small arms and smaller machine-guns, ground-based air defence guns have varied in calibre from 20 mm to at least 152 mm.
Ground-based air defence is deployed in several ways:
* Self-defence by ground forces using their organic weapons, AAAD.
* Accompanying defence, specialist aid defence elements accompanying armoured or infantry units.
* Point defence around a key target, such as a bridge, critical government building or ship.
* Area air defence, typically 'belts' of air defence to provide a barrier, but sometimes an umbrella covering an area. Areas can vary widely in size. They may extend along a nation's border, e.g. the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
MIM-23 Hawk
The Raytheon MIM-23 HAWK ("Homing all the way killer") is an American medium-range surface-to-air missile. It was designed to be a much more mobile counterpart to the MIM-14 Nike Hercules, trading off range and altitude capability for a much sm ...
and
Nike
Nike often refers to:
* Nike (mythology), a Greek goddess who personifies victory
* Nike, Inc., a major American producer of athletic shoes, apparel, and sports equipment
Nike may also refer to:
People
* Nike (name), a surname and feminine give ...
belts that ran north–south across Germany, across a military formation's manoeuvre area, or above a city or port. In ground operations air defence areas may be used offensively by rapid redeployment across current aircraft transit routes.
Air defence has included other elements, although after the Second World War most fell into disuse:
* Tethered
barrage balloon''s'' to deter and threaten aircraft flying below the height of the balloons, where they are susceptible to damaging collisions with steel tethers.
* Cables strung across valleys, sometimes forming a 'curtain' with vertical cables hanging from them.
*
''S''earchlights to illuminate aircraft at night for both gun-layers and optical instrument operators. During World War II searchlights became radar controlled.
* Large
smoke screen
A smoke screen is smoke released to mask the movement or location of military units such as infantry, tanks, aircraft, or ships.
Smoke screens are commonly deployed either by a canister (such as a grenade) or generated by a vehicle (such as ...
s created by large smoke canisters on the ground to screen targets and prevent accurate weapon aiming by aircraft.
Passive air defence is defined by NATO as "Passive measures taken for the physical defence and protection of personnel, essential installations and equipment in order to minimise the effectiveness of air and/or missile attack".
It remains a vital activity by ground forces and includes camouflage and concealment to avoid detection by reconnaissance and attacking aircraft. Measures such as camouflaging important buildings were common in the Second World War. During the Cold War the runways and taxiways of some airfields were painted green.
Organization
While navies are usually responsible for their own air defence, at least for ships at sea, organisational arrangements for land-based air defence vary between nations and over time.
The most extreme case was the Soviet Union, and this model may still be followed in some countries: it was a separate service, on a par with the army, navy, or air force. In the Soviet Union this was called ''
Voyska PVO
The Soviet Air Defence Forces (russian: войска ПВО, ''voyska protivovozdushnoy oborony'', ''voyska PVO'', ''V-PVO'', lit. ''Anti-Air Defence Troops''; and formerly ''protivovozdushnaya oborona strany'', ''PVO strany'', lit. ''Anti-Air De ...
'', and had both fighter aircraft, separate from the air force, and ground-based systems. This was divided into two arms, ''PVO Strany,'' the Strategic Air defence Service responsible for Air Defence of the Homeland, created in 1941 and becoming an independent service in 1954, and ''PVO SV,'' Air Defence of the Ground Forces. Subsequently, these became part of the air force and ground forces respectively.
At the other extreme the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
has an
Air Defense Artillery Branch
The Air Defense Artillery Branch is the branch of the United States Army that specializes in anti-aircraft weapons (such as surface to air missiles). In the U.S. Army, these groups are composed of mainly air defense systems such as the Patrio ...
that provided ground-based air defence for both homeland and the army in the field, however it is operationally under the
Joint Force Air Component Commander
Joint force air component commander (JFACC) is a United States Department of Defense doctrinal term. It is pronounced "Jay-Fack".
It refers to a senior officer who is responsible for the air forces within a joint force; i.e., a military force com ...
. Many other nations also deploy an air-defence branch in the army. Other nations, such as Japan or Israel, choose to integrate their ground based air defence systems into their air force.
In Britain and some other armies, the single artillery branch has been responsible for both home and overseas ground-based air defence, although there was divided responsibility with the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
for air defence of the British Isles in World War I. However, during the Second World War the
RAF Regiment was formed to protect airfields everywhere, and this included light air defences. In the later decades of the Cold War this included the
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
's operating bases in UK. However, all ground-based air defence was removed from Royal Air Force (RAF) jurisdiction in 2004. The British Army's
Anti-Aircraft Command
Anti-Aircraft Command (AA Command, or "Ack-Ack Command") was a British Army command of the Second World War that controlled the Territorial Army anti-aircraft artillery and searchlight formations and units defending the United Kingdom.
Origin
...
was disbanded in March 1955, but during the 1960s and 1970s the RAF's Fighter Command operated long-range air-defence missiles to protect key areas in the UK. During World War II the
Royal Marines
The Corps of Royal Marines (RM), also known as the Royal Marines Commandos, are the UK's special operations capable commando force, amphibious light infantry and also one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy. The Corps of Royal Marine ...
also provided air defence units; formally part of the mobile naval base defence organisation, they were handled as an integral part of the army-commanded ground based air defences.
The basic air defence unit is typically a battery with 2 to 12 guns or missile launchers and fire control elements. These batteries, particularly with guns, usually deploy in a small area, although batteries may be split; this is usual for some missile systems. SHORAD missile batteries often deploy across an area with individual launchers several kilometres apart. When MANPADS is operated by specialists, batteries may have several dozen teams deploying separately in small sections; self-propelled air defence guns may deploy in pairs.
Batteries are usually grouped into battalions or equivalent. In the field army, a light gun or SHORAD battalion is often assigned to a manoeuvre division. Heavier guns and long-range missiles may be in air-defence brigades and come under corps or higher command. Homeland air defence may have a full military structure. For example, the UK's Anti-Aircraft Command, commanded by a full
British Army general was part of ADGB. At its peak in 1941–42 it comprised three AA corps with 12 AA divisions between them.
History
Earliest use
The use of balloons by the U.S. Army during the American Civil War compelled the Confederates to develop methods of combating them. These included the use of artillery, small arms, and saboteurs. They were unsuccessful, and internal politics led the United States Army's
Balloon Corps to be disbanded mid-war. The Confederates experimented with balloons as well.
Turks carried out the first ever anti-airplane operation in history during the
Italo-Turkish war
The Italo-Turkish or Turco-Italian War ( tr, Trablusgarp Savaşı, "Tripolitanian War", it, Guerra di Libia, "War of Libya") was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire from 29 September 1911, to 18 October 1912. As a result o ...
. Although lacking anti-aircraft weapons, they were the first to shoot down an aeroplane by rifle fire. The first aircraft to crash in a war was the one of Lieutenant Piero Manzini, shot down on August 25, 1912.
The earliest known use of weapons specifically made for the anti-aircraft role occurred during the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870. After the
disaster at Sedan,
Paris was besieged and French troops outside the city started an attempt at communication via
balloon
A balloon is a flexible bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, and air. For special tasks, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), or light so ...
. Gustav
Krupp
The Krupp family (see pronunciation), a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is notable for its production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG (Friedrich Krup ...
mounted a modified 1-pounder (37mm) gun – the ''Ballonabwehrkanone'' (Balloon defence cannon) or ''BaK'' — on top of a horse-drawn carriage for the purpose of shooting down these balloons.
File:Canon antiballons.JPG, Ballonabwehrkanone by Krupp
File:Ballonkanone.JPG, Ballonabwehrkanone by Krupp
File:Balloon gun on Prussian corvette Nymphe 1872 NLV.jpeg, Ballonabwehrkanone on the Prussian corvette Nymphe
875 Nymphe is a minor planet orbiting the Sun. It is a member of the Maria family of asteroids.
References
External links
Lightcurve plot of 875 Nymphe Palmer Divide Observatory, Brian D. Warner, B. D. Warner (2003)
Asteroid Lightcurve Datab ...
1872.
File:Becker Flab 1917.jpg, 20 mm Becker-Oerlikon Model 1917 AA-Gun
By the early 20th century balloon, or airship, guns, for land and naval use were attracting attention. Various types of ammunition were proposed, high explosive, incendiary, bullet-chains, rod bullets and shrapnel. The need for some form of tracer or smoke trail was articulated. Fuzing options were also examined, both impact and time types. Mountings were generally pedestal type but could be on field platforms. Trials were underway in most countries in Europe but only Krupp, Erhardt,
Vickers
Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in 18 ...
Maxim, and
Schneider had published any information by 1910. Krupp's designs included adaptations of their 65 mm 9-pounder, a 75 mm 12-pounder, and even a 105 mm gun. Erhardt also had a 12-pounder, while Vickers Maxim offered a 3-pounder and Schneider a 47 mm. The French balloon gun appeared in 1910, it was an 11-pounder but mounted on a vehicle, with a total uncrewed weight of 2 tons. However, since balloons were slow moving, sights were simple. But the challenges of faster moving aeroplanes were recognised.
By 1913 only France and Germany had developed field guns suitable for engaging balloons and aircraft and addressed issues of military organisation. Britain's Royal Navy would soon introduce the
QF 3-inch and
QF 4-inch AA guns and also had
Vickers 1-pounder quick firing "pom-pom"s that could be used in various mountings.
The first US anti-aircraft cannon was a 1-pounder concept design by
Admiral Twining in 1911 to meet the perceived threat of airships, that eventually was used as the basis for the US Navy's first operational anti-aircraft cannon: the
3"/23 caliber gun.
First World War
![Anti-aircraft motor battery against Zeppelin in Horseless Age v37 n7 p261](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Anti-aircraft_motor_battery_against_Zeppelin_in_Horseless_Age_v37_n7_p261.png)
On the 30th of September, 1915, troops of the
Serbian Army
The Serbian Army ( sr-cyr, Копнена војска Србије, Kopnena vojska Srbije, lit=Serbian Land Army) is the land-based and the largest component of the Serbian Armed Forces.
History
Originally established in 1830 as the Army of Pr ...
observed three enemy aircraft approaching
Kragujevac
Kragujevac ( sr-Cyrl, Крагујевац, ) is the fourth largest city in Serbia and the administrative centre of the Šumadija District. It is the historical centre of the geographical region of Šumadija in central Serbia, and is situated on ...
. Soldiers fired at them with shotguns and machine-guns but failed to prevent them from dropping 45 bombs over the city, hitting military installations, the railway station and many other, mostly civilian, targets in the city. During the bombing raid,
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
Radoje Ljutovac fired his cannon at the enemy aircraft and successfully shot one down. It crashed in the city and both pilots died from their injuries. The cannon Ljutovac used was not designed as an anti-aircraft gun; it was a slightly modified Turkish cannon captured during the
First Balkan War
The First Balkan War ( sr, Први балкански рат, ''Prvi balkanski rat''; bg, Балканска война; el, Αʹ Βαλκανικός πόλεμος; tr, Birinci Balkan Savaşı) lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and invo ...
in 1912. This was the first occasion in military history that a military aircraft was shot down with
ground-to-air
A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...
fire.
The British recognised the need for anti-aircraft capability a few weeks before World War I broke out; on 8 July 1914, the ''New York Times'' reported that the British government had decided to 'dot the coasts of the British Isles with a series of towers, each armed with two quick-firing guns of special design,' while 'a complete circle of towers' was to be built around 'naval installations' and 'at other especially vulnerable points.' By December 1914 the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve
Royal may refer to:
People
* Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* A member of a royal family
Places United States
* Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Royal, Illinois, a village
* Royal, Iowa, a cit ...
(RNVR) was manning AA guns and searchlights assembled from various sources at some nine ports. The
Royal Garrison Artillery
The Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) was formed in 1899 as a distinct arm of the British Army's Royal Regiment of Artillery serving alongside the other two arms of the Regiment, the Royal Field Artillery (RFA) and the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) ...
(RGA) was given responsibility for AA defence in the field, using motorised two-gun sections. The first were formally formed in November 1914. Initially they used
QF 1-pounder "pom-pom" (a 37 mm version of the
Maxim Gun
The Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim. It was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world.
The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian M ...
).
![Maxim anti-aircraft machine gun](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Maxim_anti-aircraft_machine_gun.JPG)
All armies soon deployed AA guns often based on their smaller field pieces, notably the French 75 mm and Russian 76.2 mm, typically simply propped up on some sort of embankment to get the muzzle pointed skyward. The
British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
adopted the 13-pounder quickly producing new mountings suitable for AA use, the
13-pdr QF 6 cwt Mk III was issued in 1915. It remained in service throughout the war but 18-pdr guns were lined down to take the 13-pdr shell with a larger cartridge producing the
13-pr QF 9 cwt and these proved much more satisfactory. However, in general, these ad hoc solutions proved largely useless. With little experience in the role, no means of measuring target, range, height or speed the difficulty of observing their shell bursts relative to the target gunners proved unable to get their fuse setting correct and most rounds burst well below their targets. The exception to this rule was the guns protecting spotting balloons, in which case the altitude could be accurately measured from the length of the cable holding the balloon.
The first issue was ammunition. Before the war it was recognised that ammunition needed to explode in the air. Both high explosive (HE) and
shrapnel
Shrapnel may refer to:
Military
* Shrapnel shell, explosive artillery munitions, generally for anti-personnel use
* Shrapnel (fragment), a hard loose material
Popular culture
* ''Shrapnel'' (Radical Comics)
* ''Shrapnel'', a game by Adam C ...
were used, mostly the former. Airburst fuses were either igniferious (based on a burning fuse) or mechanical (clockwork). Igniferious fuses were not well suited for anti-aircraft use. The fuse length was determined by time of flight, but the burning rate of the gunpowder was affected by altitude. The British pom-poms had only contact-fused ammunition.
Zeppelin
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp ...
s, being hydrogen-filled balloons, were targets for incendiary shells and the British introduced these with airburst fuses, both shrapnel type-forward projection of incendiary 'pot' and base ejection of an incendiary stream. The British also fitted tracers to their shells for use at night. Smoke shells were also available for some AA guns, these bursts were used as targets during training.
German air attacks on the British Isles increased in 1915 and the AA efforts were deemed somewhat ineffective, so a
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
gunnery expert, Admiral Sir
Percy Scott
Admiral Sir Percy Moreton Scott, 1st Baronet, (10 July 1853 – 18 October 1924) was a British Royal Navy officer and a pioneer in modern naval gunnery. During his career he proved to be an engineer and problem solver of some considerable f ...
, was appointed to make improvements, particularly an integrated AA defence for London. The air defences were expanded with more RNVR AA guns, 75 mm and 3-inch, the pom-poms being ineffective. The naval 3-inch was also adopted by the army, the
QF 3-inch 20 cwt
The QF 3 inch 20 cwt anti-aircraft gun became the standard anti-aircraft gun used in the home defence of the United Kingdom against German airships and bombers and on the Western Front in World War I. It was also common on British warships i ...
(76 mm), a new field mounting was introduced in 1916. Since most attacks were at night, searchlights were soon used, and acoustic methods of detection and locating were developed. By December 1916 there were 183 AA Sections defending Britain (most with the 3-inch), 74 with the BEF in France and 10 in the Middle East.
AA gunnery was a difficult business. The problem was of successfully aiming a shell to burst close to its target's future position, with various factors affecting the shells' predicted trajectory. This was called deflection gun-laying, where 'off-set' angles for range and elevation were set on the gunsight and updated as their target moved. In this method, when the sights were on the target, the barrel was pointed at the target's future position. Range and height of the target determined fuse length. The difficulties increased as aircraft performance improved.
The British dealt with range measurement first, when it was realised that range was the key to producing a better fuse setting. This led to the
Height/Range Finder (HRF), the first model being the
Barr & Stroud
Barr & Stroud Limited was a pioneering Glasgow optical engineering firm. They played a leading role in the development of modern optics, including rangefinders, for the Royal Navy and for other branches of British Armed Forces during the 20th c ...
UB2, a 2-metre
optical coincident rangefinder mounted on a tripod. It measured the distance to the target and the elevation angle, which together gave the height of the aircraft. These were complex instruments and various other methods were also used. The HRF was soon joined by the Height/Fuse Indicator (HFI), this was marked with elevation angles and height lines overlaid with fuse length curves, using the height reported by the HRF operator, the necessary fuse length could be read off.
However, the problem of deflection settings — 'aim-off' — required knowing the rate of change in the target's position. Both France and the UK introduced tachymetric devices to track targets and produce vertical and horizontal deflection angles. The French Brocq system was electrical; the operator entered the target range and had displays at guns; it was used with their 75 mm. The British Wilson-Dalby gun director used a pair of trackers and mechanical tachymetry; the operator entered the fuse length, and deflection angles were read from the instruments.
By the start of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, the 77 mm had become the standard German weapon, and came mounted on a large traverse that could be easily transported on a wagon. Krupp 75 mm guns were supplied with an optical sighting system that improved their capabilities. The German Army also adapted a revolving cannon that came to be known to Allied fliers as the "
flaming onion" from the shells in flight. This gun had five barrels that quickly launched a series of 37 mm artillery shells.
As aircraft started to be used against ground targets on the battlefield, the AA guns could not be traversed quickly enough at close targets and, being relatively few, were not always in the right place (and were often unpopular with other troops), so changed positions frequently. Soon the forces were adding various
machine-gun
A machine gun is a automatic firearm, fully automatic, rifling, rifled action (firearms)#Autoloading operation, autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as Automatic shotgun, a ...
based weapons mounted on poles. These short-range weapons proved more deadly, and the "
Red Baron
Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondary ...
" is believed to have been shot down by an anti-aircraft
Vickers machine gun
The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a Water cooling, water-cooled .303 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The gun was operated by a three-man crew but typically required more me ...
. When the war ended, it was clear that the increasing capabilities of aircraft would require better means of acquiring targets and aiming at them. Nevertheless, a pattern had been set: anti-aircraft warfare would employ heavy weapons to attack high-altitude targets and lighter weapons for use when aircraft came to lower altitudes.
Interwar years
World War I demonstrated that aircraft could be an important part of the battlefield, but in some nations it was the prospect of strategic air attack that was the main issue, presenting both a threat and an opportunity. The experience of four years of air attacks on London by Zeppelins and
Gotha G.V
The Gotha G.V was a heavy bomber used by the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' (Imperial German Air Service) during World War I. Designed for long-range service and built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik AG, the Gotha G.V was used principally as a night bomber.
...
bombers had particularly influenced the British and was one of if not the main driver for forming an independent air force. As the capabilities of aircraft and their engines improved it was clear that their role in future war would be even more critical as their range and weapon load grew. However, in the years immediately after World War I, the prospect of another major war seemed remote, particularly in Europe, where the most militarily capable nations were, and little financing was available.
Four years of war had seen the creation of a new and technically demanding branch of military activity. Air defence had made huge advances, albeit from a very low starting point. However, it was new and often lacked influential 'friends' in the competition for a share of limited defence budgets. Demobilisation meant that most AA guns were taken out of service, leaving only the most modern.
However, there were lessons to be learned. In particular the British, who had had AA guns in most theatres in action in daylight and used them against night attacks at home. Furthermore, they had also formed an
Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section
The Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section of the Munitions Inventions Department was an organisation set up within Lloyd George's Ministry of Munitions in early 1916. Originally based at Northholt aerodrome, in May 1916 the section moved to the Nat ...
during the war and accumulated large amounts of data that was subjected to extensive analysis. As a result, they published, in 1924–1925, the two-volume ''Textbook of Anti-Aircraft Gunnery''. It included five key recommendations for HAA equipment:
* Shells of improved ballistic shape with HE fillings and mechanical time fuses.
* Higher rates of fire assisted by automation.
* Height finding by long-base optical instruments.
* Centralised control of fire on each gun position, directed by tachymetric instruments incorporating the facility to apply corrections of the moment for meteorological and wear factors.
* More accurate sound-location for the direction of searchlights and to provide plots for barrage fire.
Two assumptions underpinned the British approach to HAA fire; first, aimed fire was the primary method and this was enabled by predicting gun data from visually tracking the target and having its height. Second, that the target would maintain a steady course, speed and height. This HAA was to engage targets up to 24,000 feet. Mechanical, as opposed to igniferous, time fuses were required because the speed of powder burning varied with height, so fuse length was not a simple function of time of flight. Automated fire ensured a constant rate of fire that made it easier to predict where each shell should be individually aimed.
In 1925 the British adopted a new instrument developed by Vickers. It was a mechanical analogue computer Predictor AA No 1. Given the target height, its operators tracked the target and the predictor produced bearing, quadrant elevation and fuse setting. These were passed electrically to the guns, where they were displayed on repeater dials to the layers who 'matched pointers' (target data and the gun's actual data) to lay the guns. This system of repeater electrical dials built on the arrangements introduced by British coast artillery in the 1880s, and coast artillery was the background of many AA officers. Similar systems were adopted in other countries and for example the later Sperry device, designated M3A3 in the US, was also used by Britain as the Predictor AA No 2. Height finders were also increasing in size, in Britain, the World War I
Barr & Stroud
Barr & Stroud Limited was a pioneering Glasgow optical engineering firm. They played a leading role in the development of modern optics, including rangefinders, for the Royal Navy and for other branches of British Armed Forces during the 20th c ...
UB 2 (7-foot optical base) was replaced by the
UB 7 (9-foot optical base) and the UB 10 (18-foot optical base, only used on static AA sites). Goertz in Germany and Levallois in France produced 5-metre instruments. However, in most countries the main effort in HAA guns until the mid-1930s was improving existing ones, although various new designs were on drawing boards.
From the early 1930s eight countries
developed radar; these developments were sufficiently advanced by the late 1930s for development work on
sound-locating acoustic devices to be generally halted, although equipment was retained. Furthermore, in Britain the volunteer
Observer Corps
The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 December ...
formed in 1925 provided a network of observation posts to report hostile aircraft flying over Britain. Initially radar was used for airspace surveillance to detect approaching hostile aircraft. However, the German
Würzburg radar
The low-UHF band Würzburg radar was the primary ground-based tracking radar for the Wehrmacht's Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine (German Navy) during World War II. Initial development took place before the war and the apparatus entered service in 1940 ...
was capable of providing data suitable for controlling AA guns, and the British AA No 1 Mk 1 GL radar was designed to be used on AA gun positions.
The
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
prevented Germany having AA weapons, and for example, the Krupps designers joined Bofors in Sweden. Some World War I guns were retained and some covert AA training started in the late 1920s. Germany introduced the 8.8 cm FlaK 18 in 1933, 36 and 37 models followed with various improvements, but ballistic performance was unchanged. In the late 1930s the 10.5 cm FlaK 38 appeared, soon followed by the 39; this was designed primarily for static sites but had a mobile mounting, and the unit had 220 V 24 kW generators. In 1938 design started on the 12.8 cm FlaK.
The USSR introduced a new 76 mm ''M1931'' in the early 1930s and an 85 mm ''M1938'' towards the end of the decade.
Britain had successfully tested a new HAA gun, 3.6-inch, in 1918. In 1928 3.7-inch became the preferred solution, but it took 6 years to gain funding. Production of the
QF 3.7-inch (94 mm) began in 1937; this gun was used on mobile carriages with the field army and transportable guns on fixed mountings for static positions. At the same time the Royal Navy adopted a new 4.5-inch (114 mm) gun in a twin turret, which the army adopted in simplified single-gun mountings for static positions, mostly around ports where naval ammunition was available. The performance of the new guns was limited by their standard fuse No 199, with a 30-second running time, although a new mechanical time fuse giving 43 seconds was nearing readiness. In 1939 a Machine Fuse Setter was introduced to eliminate manual fuse setting.
The US ended World War I with two 3-inch AA guns and improvements were developed throughout the inter-war period. However, in 1924 work started on a new 105 mm static mounting AA gun, but only a few were produced by the mid-1930s because by this time work had started on the 90 mm AA gun, with mobile carriages and static mountings able to engage air, sea and ground targets. The M1 version was approved in 1940. During the 1920s there was some work on a 4.7-inch which lapsed, but revived in 1937, leading to a new gun in 1944.
While HAA and its associated target acquisition and fire control was the primary focus of AA efforts, low-level close-range targets remained and by the mid-1930s were becoming an issue.
Until this time the British, at RAF insistence, continued their use of World War I machine guns, and introduced twin MG mountings for AAAD. The army was forbidden from considering anything larger than .50-inch. However, in 1935 their trials showed that the minimum effective round was an impact-fused 2 lb HE shell. The following year they decided to adopt the
Bofors 40 mm and a
twin barrel Vickers 2-pdr (40 mm) on a modified naval mount. The air-cooled Bofors was vastly superior for land use, being much lighter than the water-cooled pom-pom, and UK production of the Bofors 40 mm was licensed. The
Predictor AA No 3, as the Kerrison Predictor was officially known, was introduced with it.
The 40 mm Bofors had become available in 1931. In the late 1920s the
Swedish Navy
The Swedish Navy ( sv, Svenska marinen) is the naval branch of the Swedish Armed Forces. It is composed of surface and submarine naval units – the Fleet () – as well as marine units, the Amphibious Corps ().
In Swedish, vessels o ...
had ordered the development of a 40 mm naval anti-aircraft gun from the
Bofors
AB Bofors ( , , ) is a former Swedish arms manufacturer which today is part of the British arms concern BAE Systems. The name has been associated with the iron industry and artillery manufacturing for more than 350 years.
History
Located in ...
company. It was light, rapid-firing and reliable, and a mobile version on a four-wheel carriage was soon developed. Known simply as the
40 mm
40 mm grenade (also styled 40mm grenade) is a generic class-name for grenade launcher ammunition ( subsonic shells) in caliber. The generic name stems from the fact that several countries have developed or adopted grenade launchers in ...
, it was adopted by some 17 different nations just before World War II and is still in use today in some applications such as on coastguard frigates.
Rheinmetall in Germany developed an automatic 20 mm in the 1920s and Oerlikon in Switzerland had acquired the patent to an automatic 20 mm gun designed in Germany during World War I. Germany introduced the rapid-fire
2 cm FlaK 30 and later in the decade it was redesigned by Mauser-Werke and became the 2 cm FlaK 38. Nevertheless, while 20 mm was better than a machine gun and mounted on a very small trailer made it easy to move, its effectiveness was limited. Germany therefore added a 3.7 cm. The first, the 3.7 cm FlaK 18 developed by Rheinmetall in the early 1930s, was basically an enlarged 2 cm FlaK 30. It was introduced in 1935 and production stopped the following year. A redesigned gun 3.7 cm FlaK 36 entered service in 1938, it too had a two-wheel carriage. However, by the mid-1930s the Luftwaffe realised that there was still a coverage gap between 3.7 cm and 8.8 cm guns. They started development of a 5 cm gun on a four-wheel carriage.
After World War I the US Army started developing a dual-role (AA/ground) automatic 37 mm cannon, designed by
John M. Browning
John Moses Browning (January 23, 1855 – November 26, 1926) was an American firearm designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms many of which are still in use around the world. He m ...
. It was standardised in 1927 as the T9 AA cannon, but trials quickly revealed that it was worthless in the ground role. However, while the shell was a bit light (well under 2 lbs) it had a good effective ceiling and fired 125 rounds per minute; an AA carriage was developed and it entered service in 1939. The Browning 37 mm proved prone to jamming, and was eventually replaced in AA units by the
''Bofors 40 mm''. The Bofors had attracted attention from the US Navy, but none were acquired before 1939. Also, in 1931 the US Army worked on a mobile anti-aircraft machine mount on the back of a heavy truck having four .30 calibre water-cooled machine guns and an optical director. It proved unsuccessful and was abandoned.
The Soviet Union also used a 37 mm, the
37 mm M1939, which appears to have been copied from the Bofors 40 mm. A Bofors 25 mm, essentially a scaled down 40 mm, was also copied as the
25 mm M1939.
During the 1930s solid-fuel rockets were under development in the Soviet Union and Britain. In Britain the interest was for anti-aircraft fire, it quickly became clear that guidance would be required for precision. However, rockets, or 'unrotated projectiles' as they were called, could be used for anti-aircraft barrages. A 2-inch rocket using HE or wire obstacle warheads was introduced first to deal with low-level or dive bombing attacks on smaller targets such as airfields. The 3-inch was in development at the end of the inter-war period.
Naval aspects
WW1 had been a war in which air warfare blossomed, but had not matured to the point of being a real threat to naval forces. The prevailing assumption was that a few relatively small caliber naval guns could manage to keep enemy aircraft beyond a range where harm might be expected. In 1939 radio controlled drones became available to the US Navy in quantity allowing a more realistic testing of existing anti-aircraft suites against actual flying and manoeuvring targets.
[Friedman, Norman Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns and Gunnery Location 242] The results were sobering to an unexpected degree. The United States was still emerging from the effects of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
and funds for the military had been sparse to the degree that 50% of shells used were still powder fused.
The US Navy found that a significant portion of its shells were duds or low order detonations (incomplete detonation of the explosive contained by the shell). Virtually every major country involved in combat in World War 2 invested in aircraft development. The cost of aircraft research and development was small and the results could be large. So rapid was the performance leaps of evolving aircraft that the British HAC's fire control system was obsolete and designing a successor very difficult for the British establishment.
[Friedman, Norman Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns and Gunnery Location 271] Electronics would prove to be an enabler for effective anti-aircraft systems and both the US and Great Britain had a growing electronics industry.
In 1939 radio controlled drones became available to actually test existing systems in British and American service. The results were disappointing by any measure. High-level manoeuvring drones were virtually immune to shipboard AA systems. The US drones could simulate dive bombing which showed the dire need for autocannons. Japan introduced powered gliders in 1940 as drones but apparently was unable to dive bomb. There is no evidence of other powers using drones in this application at all. It may have caused a major underestimation of the threat and an inflated view of their AA systems.
Second World War
Poland's AA defences were no match for the German attack, and the situation was similar in other European countries. Significant AAW (Anti-Air Warfare) started with the
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain, also known as the Air Battle for England (german: die Luftschlacht um England), was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defende ...
in the summer of 1940.
QF 3.7-inch AA guns provided the backbone of the ground-based AA defences, although initially significant numbers of
QF 3-inch 20 cwt
The QF 3 inch 20 cwt anti-aircraft gun became the standard anti-aircraft gun used in the home defence of the United Kingdom against German airships and bombers and on the Western Front in World War I. It was also common on British warships i ...
were also used. The Army's Anti-aircraft command, which was under command of the Air Defence UK organisation, grew to 12 AA divisions in 3 AA corps.
Bofors 40 mm gun Bofors 40 mm gun is a name or designation given to two models of 40 mm calibre anti-aircraft guns designed and developed by the Swedish company Bofors:
*Bofors 40 mm L/60 gun - developed in the 1930s, widely used in World War II and into the 1990s
...
s entered service in increasing numbers. In addition, the RAF regiment was formed in 1941 with responsibility for airfield air defence, eventually with Bofors 40 mm as their main armament. Fixed AA defences, using HAA and LAA, were established by the Army in key overseas places, notably
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
,
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal ( arz, قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The long canal is a popular ...
and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
.
While the 3.7-inch was the main HAA gun in fixed defences and the only mobile HAA gun with the field army, the
QF 4.5-inch gun, manned by artillery, was used in the vicinity of naval ports and made use of the naval ammunition supply. The 4.5-inch at Singapore had the first success in shooting down Japanese bombers. Mid war
QF 5.25-inch naval gun
The QF 5.25-inch Mark I gun was the heaviest dual-purpose gun used by the Royal Navy during the Second World War. Although considered less than completely successful, it saw extensive service. 267 guns were built.
Design
Unlike its French and ...
s started being emplaced in some permanent sites around London. This gun was also deployed in dual-role coast defence/AA positions.
![Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-635-3999-24, Deutschland, Flak-Batterie in Feuerstellung](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-635-3999-24%2C_Deutschland%2C_Flak-Batterie_in_Feuerstellung.jpg)
Germany's high-altitude needs were originally going to be filled by a 75 mm gun from
Krupp
The Krupp family (see pronunciation), a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is notable for its production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG (Friedrich Krup ...
, designed in collaboration with their Swedish counterpart
Bofors
AB Bofors ( , , ) is a former Swedish arms manufacturer which today is part of the British arms concern BAE Systems. The name has been associated with the iron industry and artillery manufacturing for more than 350 years.
History
Located in ...
, but the specifications were later amended to require much higher performance. In response Krupp's engineers presented a new 88 mm design, the
FlaK 36. First used in Spain during the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
, the gun proved to be one of the best anti-aircraft guns in the world, as well as particularly deadly against light, medium, and even early heavy tanks.
After the
Dambusters raid
Operation Chastise or commonly known as the Dambusters Raid was an attack on German dams carried out on the night of 16/17 May 1943 by 617 Squadron RAF Bomber Command, later called the Dam Busters, using special "bouncing bombs" developed by ...
in 1943 an entirely new system was developed that was required to knock down any low-flying aircraft with a single hit. The first attempt to produce such a system used a 50 mm gun, but this proved inaccurate and a new 55 mm gun replaced it. The system used a centralised control system including both search and targeting
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
, which calculated the aim point for the guns after considering windage and ballistics, and then sent electrical commands to the guns, which used
hydraulic
Hydraulics (from Greek: Υδραυλική) is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counter ...
s to point themselves at high speeds. Operators simply fed the guns and selected the targets. This system, modern even by today's standards, was in late development when the war ended.
![Wehrmacht Flugabwehr Airdefence](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Wehrmacht_Flugabwehr_Airdefence.jpeg)
The British had already arranged licence building of the
Bofors 40 mm Bofors 40 mm gun is a name or designation given to two models of 40 mm calibre anti-aircraft guns designed and developed by the Swedish company Bofors:
*Bofors 40 mm L/60 gun - developed in the 1930s, widely used in World War II and into the 1990s
...
, and introduced these into service. These had the power to knock down aircraft of any size, yet were light enough to be mobile and easily swung. The gun became so important to the British war effort that they even produced a movie, ''
The Gun'', that encouraged workers on the assembly line to work harder. The Imperial measurement production drawings the British had developed were supplied to the Americans who produced their own (unlicensed) copy of the 40 mm at the start of the war, moving to licensed production in mid-1941.
![B-24 hit by Flak](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/B-24_hit_by_Flak.jpg)
Service trials demonstrated another problem however: that ranging and tracking the new high-speed targets was almost impossible. At short range, the apparent target area is relatively large, the trajectory is flat and the time of flight is short, allowing to correct lead by watching the tracers. At long range, the aircraft remains in firing range for a long time, so the necessary calculations can, in theory, be done by slide rules—though, because small errors in distance cause large errors in shell fall height and detonation time, exact ranging is crucial. For the ranges and speeds that the Bofors worked at, neither answer was good enough.
![Hyde Park Anti-aircraft guns H 993](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Hyde_Park_Anti-aircraft_guns_H_993.jpg)
The solution was
automation
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
, in the form of a mechanical computer, the
Kerrison Predictor
The Kerrison Predictor was one of the first fully automated anti-aircraft fire-control systems. It was used to automate the aiming of the British Army's Bofors 40 mm guns and provide accurate lead calculations through simple inputs on three main ...
. Operators kept it pointed at the target, and the Predictor then calculated the proper aim point automatically and displayed it as a pointer mounted on the gun. The gun operators simply followed the pointer and loaded the shells. The Kerrison was fairly simple, but it pointed the way to future generations that incorporated radar, first for ranging and later for tracking. Similar predictor systems were introduced by Germany during the war, also adding radar ranging as the war progressed.
![20-mm-AA-cannon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/20-mm-AA-cannon.gif)
A plethora of anti-aircraft gun systems of smaller calibre was available to the German Wehrmacht combined forces, and among them the 1940-origin
'' Flakvierling'' quadruple-20 mm-
autocannon
An autocannon, automatic cannon or machine cannon is a fully automatic gun that is capable of rapid-firing large-caliber ( or more) armour-piercing, explosive or incendiary shells, as opposed to the smaller-caliber kinetic projectiles (bull ...
-based anti-aircraft weapon system was one of the most often-seen weapons, seeing service on both land and sea. The similar
Allied
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
smaller-calibre air-defence weapons of the American forces were also quite capable, although they receive little attention. Their needs could cogently be met with smaller-calibre ordnance beyond using the usual singly-mounted
M2 .50 caliber
This is a list of firearm cartridges which have bullets in the to caliber range.
*''Length'' refers to the cartridge case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a ...
machine gun atop a tank's turret, as four of the ground-used "heavy barrel" (M2HB) guns were mounted together on the American Maxson firm's
M45 Quadmount
The M45 Quadmount (nicknamed the "meat chopper" and "Krautmower"Rottman, Gordon L., Browning .50-Caliber Machine Guns', Osprey Publishing (2010), , p. 19-20 for its high rate of fire) was a weapon mounting consisting of four of the "HB", or "hea ...
weapon (as a direct answer to the ''Flakvierling''), which were often mounted on the back of a
half-track
A half-track is a civilian or military vehicle with regular wheels at the front for steering and continuous tracks at the back to propel the vehicle and carry most of the load. The purpose of this combination is to produce a vehicle with the cro ...
to form the
Half Track, M16 GMC, Anti-Aircraft. Although of less power than Germany's 20 mm systems, the typical four or five combat batteries of an Army AAA battalion were often spread many kilometres apart from each other, rapidly attaching and detaching to larger ground combat units to provide welcome defence from enemy aircraft.
![Anti-aircraft BrenGun](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Anti-aircraft_BrenGun.jpg)
AAA battalions were also used to help suppress ground targets. Their larger
90 mm M3 gun
9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding .
Evolution of the Arabic digit
In the beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and ...
would prove, as did the eighty-eight, to make an excellent anti-tank gun as well, and was widely used late in the war in this role. Also available to the Americans at the start of the war was the
120 mm M1 gun
The 120 mm Gun M1 was the United States Army's standard super-heavy anti-aircraft gun during World War II and the Korean War, complementing the smaller and more mobile M2 90 mm gun in service. Its maximum altitude was about , which earned it ...
''stratosphere gun'', which was the most powerful AA gun with an impressive altitude capability, however no 120 M1 was ever fired at an enemy aircraft. The 90 mm and 120 mm guns would continue to be used into the 1950s.
The
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
had also put some thought into the problem, When the US Navy began to rearm in 1939 in many ships the primary short ranged gun was the M2 .50 caliber machine gun. While effective in fighters at 300 to 400 yards this is point blank range in naval anti-aircraft ranges. Production of the Swiss Oerlikon 20mm had already started to provide protection for the British and this was adopted in exchange for the M2 machine guns. In the December 1941 to January 1942 time frame production had risen to not only cover all British requirements but also allowed 812 units to be actually delivered to the US Navy. By the end of 1942 the 20mm had accounted for 42% of all aircraft destroyed by the US Navy's shipboard AA. However, the King Board had noted that the balance was shifting towards the larger guns used by the fleet. The US Navy had intended to use the British Pom-Pom, however, the weapon required the use of cordite which BuOrd had found objectionable for US service. Further investigation revealed that US powders would not work in the Pom-Pom. Bureau of Ordnance was well aware of the Bofors 40mm gun. The firm York Safe and Lock was negotiating with Bofors to attain the rights to the air-cooled version of the weapon. At the same time Henry Howard, an engineer, and businessman became aware of it and contacted RAMD W. R. Furlong Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. He ordered the Bofors weapon system to be investigated. York Safe and Lock would be used as the contracting agent. The system had to be redesigned for both the English measurement system and mass production, as the original documents recommended hand filing and drilling to shape. As early as 1928 the US Navy saw the need to replace the .50 caliber machine gun with something heavier. The 1.1"/75 (28 mm) Mark 1 was designed. Placed in quadruple mounts with a 500 rpm rate of fire it would have fit the requirements. However, the gun was suffering teething issues being prone to jamming. While this could have been solved the weight of the system was equal to that of the quad mount Bofors 40mm while lacking the range and power that the Bofors provided. The gun was relegated to smaller less vital ships by the end of the war. The
5"/38 naval gun rounded out the US Navy's AA suite. A dual purpose mount, it was used in both the surface and AA roles with great success.
Mated with the Mark 37 director and the proximity fuse it could routinely knock drones out of the sky at ranges as far as 13,000 yards.
![USS New Mexico Flak Kamikaze Battle of Okinawa](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/USS_New_Mexico_Flak_Kamikaze_Battle_of_Okinawa.jpg)
A 3"/50 MK 22 semiautomatic dual gun was produced but not employed before the end of the war and therefore beyond the scope of this article. However early marks of the 3"/50 were employed in destroyer escorts and on merchant ships. 3″/50
caliber
In guns, particularly firearms, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviated as "cal") is the specified nominal internal diameter of the gun barrel Gauge (firearms) , bore – regardless of how or where the bore is measured and whether the f ...
guns (Marks 10, 17, 18, and 20) first entered service in 1915 as a refit to , and were subsequently mounted on many types of ships as the need for anti-aircraft protection was recognized. During World War II, they were the primary gun armament on
destroyer escort
Destroyer escort (DE) was the United States Navy mid-20th-century classification for a warship designed with the endurance necessary to escort mid-ocean convoys of merchant marine ships.
Development of the destroyer escort was promoted by th ...
s,
patrol frigate
A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat.
The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and ...
s,
submarine chaser
A submarine chaser or subchaser is a small naval vessel that is specifically intended for anti-submarine warfare. Many of the American submarine chasers used in World War I found their way to Allied nations by way of Lend-Lease in World War II.
...
s,
minesweeper
A minesweeper is a small warship designed to remove or detonate naval mines. Using various mechanisms intended to counter the threat posed by naval mines, minesweepers keep waterways clear for safe shipping.
History
The earliest known usage of ...
s, some fleet
submarine
A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
s, and other auxiliary vessels, and were used as a secondary dual-purpose battery on some other types of ships, including some older battleships. They also replaced the original low-angle
4"/50 caliber gun
The 4″/50 caliber gun (spoken "four-inch-fifty-caliber") was the standard low-angle, quick-firing gun for United States, first appearing on the monitor and then used on "Flush Deck" destroyers through World War I and the 1920s. It was also the ...
s (Mark 9) on "flush-deck" and s to provide better anti-aircraft protection. The gun was also used on specialist destroyer conversions; the "AVD"
seaplane tender
A seaplane tender is a boat or ship that supports the operation of seaplanes. Some of these vessels, known as seaplane carriers, could not only carry seaplanes but also provided all the facilities needed for their operation; these ships are rega ...
conversions received two guns; the "APD"
high-speed transport
High-speed transports were converted destroyers and destroyer escorts used in US Navy amphibious operations in World War II and afterward. They received the US Hull classification symbol APD; "AP" for transport and "D" for destroyer. In 1969, the ...
s, "DM"
minelayer
A minelayer is any warship, submarine or military aircraft deploying explosive mines. Since World War I the term "minelayer" refers specifically to a naval ship used for deploying naval mines. "Mine planting" was the term for installing controll ...
s, and
"DMS" minesweeper conversions received three guns, and those retaining destroyer classification received six.
![The Royal Navy during the Second World War A26878](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/The_Royal_Navy_during_the_Second_World_War_A26878.jpg)
The Germans developed massive reinforced-concrete
blockhouse
A blockhouse is a small fortification, usually consisting of one or more rooms with loopholes, allowing its defenders to fire in various directions. It is usually an isolated fort in the form of a single building, serving as a defensive stro ...
s, some more than six stories high, which were known as ''
Hochbunker
Air raid shelters are structures for the protection of non-combatants as well as combatants against enemy attacks from the air. They are similar to bunkers in many regards, although they are not designed to defend against ground attack (but many ...
'' "High Bunkers" or "''Flaktürme''
flak tower
Flak towers (german: link=no, Flaktürme) were large, above-ground, anti-aircraft gun blockhouse towers constructed by Nazi Germany. There were 8 flak tower complexes in the cities of Berlin (three), Hamburg (two), and Vienna (three) from 1940 on ...
s, on which they placed anti-aircraft artillery. Those in cities attacked by the Allied land forces became fortresses. Several in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
were some of the last buildings to fall to the Soviets during the
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II.
After the Vistula– ...
in 1945. The British built structures such as the
Maunsell Forts
The Maunsell Forts are armed towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom. They were operated as army and navy forts, and named after their designer, Guy Maunsell. The forts were ...
in the
North Sea
The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...
, the
Thames Estuary
The Thames Estuary is where the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea, in the south-east of Great Britain.
Limits
An estuary can be defined according to different criteria (e.g. tidal, geographical, navigational or in terms of salini ...
and other tidal areas upon which they based guns. After the war most were left to rot. Some were outside territorial waters, and had a second life in the 1960s as platforms for
pirate radio
Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license.
In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially w ...
stations, while another became the base of a
micronation
A micronation is a political entity whose members claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by world governments or major international organizations. Micronations are classified se ...
, the
Principality of Sealand
The Principality of Sealand () is an unrecognized micronation that claims HM Fort Roughs (also known as Roughs Tower), an offshore platform in the North Sea approximately off the coast of Suffolk, as its territory. Roughs Tower is a Mauns ...
.
![B-24 Flak](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/B-24_Flak.jpg)
Some nations started rocket research before World War II, including for anti-aircraft use. Further research started during the war. The first step was unguided missile systems like the British
2-inch RP and 3-inch, which was fired in large numbers from ''Z batteries'', and were also fitted to warships. The firing of one of these devices during an air raid is suspected to have caused the
Bethnal Green disaster in 1943. Facing the threat of Japanese
Kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...
attacks the British and US developed surface-to-air rockets like British
Stooge or the American
Lark
Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occu ...
as counter measures, but none of them were ready at the end of the war. The Germans missile research was the most advanced of the war as the Germans put considerable effort in the research and development of rocket systems for all purposes. Among them were several
guided and unguided systems. Unguided systems involved the
Fliegerfaust
The ''Fliegerfaust'' (lit. "pilot fist","plane fist", or "aviator fist"), also known as the "''Luftfaust''" (lit. "air fist"), was a German prototype of an unguided, man-portable, multi-barreled ground-to-air rocket launcher, designed to destro ...
(literally "aircraft fist") as the first
MANPADS. Guided systems were several sophisticated radio, wire, or radar guided missiles like the
Wasserfall
The ''Wasserfall Ferngelenkte FlaRakete'' (Waterfall Remote-Controlled A-A Rocket) was a German guided supersonic surface-to-air missile project of World War II. Development was not completed before the end of the war and it was not used operati ...
("waterfall") rocket. Owing to the severe war situation for Germany all of those systems were only produced in small numbers and most of them were only used by training or trial units.
![Ellgaard_Flak_im_Balkan_1942](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Ellgaard_Flak_im_Balkan_1942.jpg)
Another aspect of anti-aircraft defence was the use of
barrage balloon
A barrage balloon is a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe collision risk to aircraft, making the attacker's approach more difficult. Early barra ...
s to act as physical obstacle initially to bomber aircraft over cities and later for ground attack aircraft over the
Normandy invasion fleets. The balloon, a simple blimp tethered to the ground, worked in two ways. Firstly, it and the steel cable were a danger to any aircraft that tried to fly among them. Secondly, to avoid the balloons, bombers had to fly at a higher altitude, which was more favourable for the guns. Barrage balloons were limited in application, and had minimal success at bringing down aircraft, being largely immobile and passive defences.
The allies' most advanced technologies were showcased by the anti-aircraft defence against the German
V-1 V1, V01 or V-1 can refer to version one (for anything) (e.g., see version control)
V1, V01 or V-1 may also refer to:
In aircraft
* V-1 flying bomb, a World War II German weapon
* V1 speed, the maximum speed at which an aircraft pilot may abort ...
cruise missiles (V stands for ''Vergeltungswaffe'', "retaliation weapon"). The 419th and 601st Anti-aircraft Gun Battalions of the US Army were first allocated to the Folkestone-Dover coast to defend London, and then moved to Belgium to become part of the "Antwerp X" project coordinated from the in
Keerbergen
Keerbergen () is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant. The municipality comprises only the town of Keerbergen proper. On January 1, 2006, Keerbergen had a total population of 12,444. The total area is 18.39 km² w ...
. With the liberation of Antwerp, the port city immediately became the highest priority target, and received the largest number of V-1 and V-2 missiles of any city. The smallest tactical unit of the operation was a gun battery consisting of four 90 mm guns firing shells equipped with a radio
proximity fuse
A proximity fuze (or fuse) is a Fuze (munitions), fuze that detonates an Explosive material, explosive device automatically when the distance to the target becomes smaller than a predetermined value. Proximity fuzes are designed for targets such ...
. Incoming targets were acquired and automatically tracked by
SCR-584 radar
The SCR-584 (short for '' Set, Complete, Radio # 584'') was an automatic-tracking microwave radar developed by the MIT Radiation Laboratory during World War II. It was one of the most advanced ground-based radars of its era, and became one of th ...
, developed at the MIT
Rad Lab. Output from the gun-laying radar was fed to the
M9 Gun Director
The M9 Gun Director was an electronic director developed by Bell Labs during World War II. This computer continuously calculated trigonometric firing solutions for anti-aircraft weapons against enemy aircraft. When cued by the SCR-584 centimet ...
, an electronic analogue computer developed at
Bell Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
to calculate the lead and elevation corrections for the guns. With the help of these three technologies, close to 90% of the V-1 missiles, on track to the defence zone around the port, were destroyed.
Post-war
![RIM-8 Talos launched](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/RIM-8_Talos_launched.JPEG)
Post-war analysis demonstrated that even with newest anti-aircraft systems employed by both sides, the vast majority of bombers reached their targets successfully, on the order of 90%. While these figures were undesirable during the war, the advent of the
nuclear bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
considerably altered the acceptability of even a single bomber reaching its target.
The developments during World War II continued for a short time into the post-war period as well. In particular the U.S. Army set up a huge air defence network around its larger cities based on radar-guided 90 mm and 120 mm guns. US efforts continued into the 1950s with the 75 mm
Skysweeper
The M51 Skysweeper (Gun, M51, Antiaircraft or Gun automatic, 75-mm T83E6, and E7, recoil mechanism, and loader rammer) was an anti-aircraft gun deployed in the early 1950s by both the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force. It was the first such gun to ...
system, an almost fully automated system including the radar, computers, power, and auto-loading gun on a single powered platform. The Skysweeper replaced all smaller guns then in use in the Army, notably the 40 mm Bofors. By 1955, the US Military deemed the 40mm Bofors obsolete due to its reduced capability to shoot down jet powered aircraft, and turned to SAM development, with the Nike Ajax and the RSD-58. In Europe NATO's Allied Command Europe developed an integrated air defence system,
NATO Air Defence Ground Environment
The NATO Integrated Air Defense System (short: NATINADS) is a command and control network combining radars and other facilities spread throughout the NATO alliance's air defence forces. It formed in the mid-1950s and became operational in 1962 as ...
(NADGE), that later became the
NATO Integrated Air Defence System
The NATO Integrated Air Defense System (short: NATINADS) is a command and control network combining radars and other facilities spread throughout the NATO alliance's air defence forces. It formed in the mid-1950s and became operational in 1962 as ...
.
The introduction of the guided missile resulted in a significant shift in anti-aircraft strategy. Although Germany had been desperate to introduce anti-aircraft missile systems, none became operational during World War II. Following several years of post-war development, however, these systems began to mature into viable weapons. The US started an upgrade of their defences using the
Nike Ajax
The United States Army's Nike Ajax was the world's first operational guided surface-to-air missile (SAM), entering service in 1954. Nike Ajax was designed to attack conventional bomber aircraft flying at high subsonic speeds and altitudes abov ...
missile, and soon the larger anti-aircraft guns disappeared. The same thing occurred in the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
after the introduction of their
SA-2 Guideline
The S-75 (Russian: С-75; NATO reporting name SA-2 Guideline) is a Soviet-designed, high-altitude air defence system, built around a surface-to-air missile with command guidance. Following its first deployment in 1957 it became one of the most w ...
systems.
![Type 91 SAM fire](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Type_91_SAM_fire.JPG)
As this process continued, the missile found itself being used for more and more of the roles formerly filled by guns. First to go were the large weapons, replaced by equally large missile systems of much higher performance. Smaller missiles soon followed, eventually becoming small enough to be mounted on armoured cars and tank chassis. These started replacing, or at least supplanting, similar gun-based
SPAAG
An anti-aircraft vehicle, also known as a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) or self-propelled air defense system (SPAD), is a mobile vehicle with a dedicated anti-aircraft capability.
Specific weapon systems used include machine guns, ...
systems in the 1960s, and by the 1990s had replaced almost all such systems in modern armies. Man-portable missiles,
MANPADS as they are known today, were introduced in the 1960s and have supplanted or replaced even the smallest guns in most advanced armies.
In the 1982
Falklands War
The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial de ...
, the Argentine armed forces deployed the newest west European weapons including the
Oerlikon GDF-002 35 mm twin cannon and
SAM Roland. The
Rapier
A rapier () or is a type of sword with a slender and sharply-pointed two-edged blade that was popular in Western Europe, both for civilian use (dueling and self-defense) and as a military side arm, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.
Impor ...
missile system was the primary GBAD system, used by both British artillery and RAF regiment, a few brand-new
FIM-92 Stinger
The FIM-92 Stinger is an American man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS) that operates as an infrared homing surface-to-air missile (SAM). It can be adapted to fire from a wide variety of ground vehicles, and from helicopters as the Air-to- ...
were used by British special forces. Both sides also used the
Blowpipe missile
The Shorts Blowpipe is a man-portable (MANPADS) surface-to-air missile that was in use with the British Army and Royal Marines from 1975. It also saw service in other military forces around the world. Most examples were retired by the mid-1990 ...
. British naval missiles used included
Sea Dart
Sea Dart, or GWS.30 was a Royal Navy surface-to-air missile system designed in the 1960s and entering service in 1973. It was fitted to the Type 42 destroyers (United Kingdom and Argentina), Type 82 destroyer and s of the Royal Navy. Originally ...
and the older
Sea Slug
Sea slug is a common name for some marine invertebrates with varying levels of resemblance to terrestrial slugs. Most creatures known as sea slugs are gastropods, i.e. they are sea snails (marine gastropod mollusks) that over evolutionary t ...
longer range systems,
Sea Cat
Seacat was a British short-range surface-to-air missile system intended to replace the ubiquitous Bofors 40 mm gun aboard warships of all sizes. It was the world's first operational shipboard point-defence missile system, and was designed so tha ...
and the new
Sea Wolf short range systems. Machine guns in AA mountings were used both ashore and afloat.
During the
2008 South Ossetia war
The 2008 Russo-Georgian WarThe war is known by a variety of other names, including Five-Day War, August War and Russian invasion of Georgia. was a war between Georgia, on one side, and Russia and the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of Sou ...
air power faced off against powerful SAM systems, like the 1980s
Buk-M1
The Buk (russian: link=no, "Бук"; " beech" (tree), ) is a family of self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air missile systems developed by the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, and designed to counter cruise ...
.
In February 2018, an Israeli F-16 fighter was downed in the occupied
Golan Heights
The Golan Heights ( ar, هَضْبَةُ الْجَوْلَانِ, Haḍbatu l-Jawlān or ; he, רמת הגולן, ), or simply the Golan, is a region in the Levant spanning about . The region defined as the Golan Heights differs between di ...
province, after it had attacked an Iranian target in Syria.
In 2006, Israel also lost a helicopter over Lebanon, shot down by a Hezbollah rocket.
AA warfare systems
![Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer Gepard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer_Gepard.jpg)
Although the firearms used by the infantry, particularly machine guns, can be used to engage low altitude air targets, on occasion with notable success, their effectiveness is generally limited and the muzzle flashes reveal infantry positions. Speed and altitude of modern jet aircraft limit target opportunities, and critical systems may be armoured in aircraft designed for the
ground attack role. Adaptations of the standard
autocannon
An autocannon, automatic cannon or machine cannon is a fully automatic gun that is capable of rapid-firing large-caliber ( or more) armour-piercing, explosive or incendiary shells, as opposed to the smaller-caliber kinetic projectiles (bull ...
, originally intended for air-to-ground use, and heavier
artillery
Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...
systems were commonly used for most anti-aircraft gunnery, starting with standard pieces on new mountings, and evolving to specially designed guns with much higher performance prior to World War II.
The
shells fired by these weapons are usually fitted with different types of
fuses
Fuse or FUSE may refer to:
Devices
* Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current
** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles
* Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protec ...
(
barometric
A barometer is a scientific instrument that is used to measure air pressure in a certain environment. Pressure tendency can forecast short term changes in the weather. Many measurements of air pressure are used within surface weather analysis ...
, time-delay, or
proximity) to explode close to the airborne target, releasing a shower of fast metal fragments. For shorter-range work, a lighter weapon with a higher
rate of fire is required, to increase a hit probability on a fast airborne target. Weapons between
20 mm and 40 mm calibre have been widely used in this role. Smaller weapons, typically .50 calibre or even 8 mm rifle calibre guns have been used in the smallest mounts.
Unlike the heavier guns, these smaller weapons are in widespread use due to their low cost and ability to quickly follow the target. Classic examples of autocannons and large calibre guns are the
40 mm autocannon designed by Bofors and the
8.8 cm FlaK 18, 36 gun designed by Krupp. Artillery weapons of this sort have for the most part been superseded by the effective surface-to-air missile systems that were introduced in the 1950s, although they were still retained by many nations. The development of surface-to-air missiles began in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
during the late World War II with missiles such as the
Wasserfall
The ''Wasserfall Ferngelenkte FlaRakete'' (Waterfall Remote-Controlled A-A Rocket) was a German guided supersonic surface-to-air missile project of World War II. Development was not completed before the end of the war and it was not used operati ...
, though no working system was deployed before the war's end, and represented new attempts to increase effectiveness of the
anti-aircraft systems faced with growing threat from
bomber
A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped ...
s. Land-based SAMs can be deployed from fixed installations or mobile launchers, either wheeled or tracked. The tracked vehicles are usually armoured vehicles specifically designed to carry SAMs.
Larger SAMs may be deployed in fixed launchers, but can be towed/re-deployed at will. The SAMs launched by individuals are known in the United States as the Man-Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS). MANPADS of the former Soviet Union have been exported around the World, and can be found in use by many armed forces. Targets for non-ManPAD SAMs will usually be acquired by air-search
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
, then tracked before/while a SAM is "locked-on" and then fired. Potential targets, if they are military aircraft, will be
identified as friend or foe before being engaged. The developments in the latest and relatively cheap short-range missiles have begun to replace autocannons in this role.
![Anti aircraft Leningrad 1941](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Anti_aircraft_Leningrad_1941.JPG)
The interceptor aircraft (or simply interceptor) is a type of
fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
designed specifically to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft, particularly
bombers
A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an aircraf ...
, usually relying on high speed and
altitude
Altitude or height (also sometimes known as depth) is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context ...
capabilities. A number of jet interceptors such as the
F-102 Delta Dagger, the
F-106 Delta Dart
The Convair F-106 Delta Dart was the primary all-weather interceptor aircraft of the United States Air Force from the 1960s through to the 1980s. Designed as the so-called "Ultimate Interceptor", it proved to be the last specialist interceptor i ...
, and the
MiG-25
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 (russian: Микоян и Гуревич МиГ-25; NATO reporting name: Foxbat) is a supersonic interceptor and reconnaissance aircraft that is among the fastest military aircraft to enter service. Designed by th ...
were built in the period starting after the end of World War II and ending in the late 1960s, when they became less important due to the shifting of the
strategic bombing
Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in total war with the goal of defeating the enemy by destroying its morale, its economic ability to produce and transport materiel to the theatres of military operations, or both. It is a systematica ...
role to
ICBM
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...
s. Invariably the type is differentiated from other fighter aircraft designs by higher speeds and shorter operating ranges, as well as much reduced ordnance payloads.
The
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
systems use
electromagnetic
In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions of a ...
waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of aircraft and
weather formations to provide tactical and operational warning and direction, primarily during defensive operations. In their functional roles they provide target search, threat detection,
guidance,
reconnaissance
In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities.
Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...
,
navigation
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...
,
instrumentation
Instrumentation a collective term for measuring instruments that are used for indicating, measuring and recording physical quantities. The term has its origins in the art and science of scientific instrument-making.
Instrumentation can refer to ...
, and
weather reporting support to combat operations.
Anti-UAV defences
An ''Anti-UAV Defence System'' (AUDS) is a system for defence against military
unmanned aerial vehicle
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller ...
s. A variety of designs have been developed, using lasers, net-guns and air-to-air netting, signal jamming, and hi-jacking by means of in-flight hacking.
Anti-UAV defence systems have been deployed against
ISIL
An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
drones during the
Battle of Mosul (2016–2017).
Alternative approaches for dealing with UAVs have included using a
shotgun
A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small p ...
at close range, and for smaller drones, training
eagle
Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...
s to snatch them from the air.
It is important to keep in mind that this only works on relatively small UAVs and
loitering munition
A loitering munition (also known as a suicide drone[Loitering Muniti ...](_blank)
s (also called "suicide drones"). Larger UCAVs such as the
MQ-1 Predator
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator (often referred to as the predator drone) is an American remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) built by General Atomics that was used primarily by the United States Air Force (USAF) and Central Intelligence Agency ...
can be (and frequently are) shot down like manned aircraft of similar sizes and flight profiles.
Future developments
Guns are being increasingly pushed into specialist roles, such as the Dutch
Goalkeeper CIWS
The Goalkeeper CIWS is a Dutch close-in weapon system (''SEE-wiz'') introduced in 1979. It is an autonomous and completely automatic weapon system for short-range defence of ships against highly manoeuvrable missiles, aircraft and fast-manoeuve ...
, which uses the
GAU-8 Avenger
The General Electric GAU-8/A Avenger is a 30 mm hydraulically driven seven-barrel Gatling-style autocannon that is primarily mounted in the United States Air Force's Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II. Designed to destroy a wide variety of g ...
30 mm seven-barrel
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon.
The Gatling gun's operation centered on a cyc ...
for last ditch anti-missile and anti-aircraft defence. Even this formerly front-line weapon is currently being replaced by new missile systems, such as the
RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile
The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) is a small, lightweight, infrared homing surface-to-air missile in use by the German, Japanese, Greek, Turkish, South Korean, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, Mexican, UAE, and U.S. Navies. It was original ...
, which is smaller, faster, and allows for mid-flight course correction (guidance) to ensure a hit. To bridge the gap between guns and missiles, Russia in particular produces the
Kashtan CIWS
The Kortik (russian: Кортик, "dirk") close-in weapon system (CIWS) is a modern naval air defence gun-missile system deployed by the Russian Navy. Its export version is known as Kashtan (russian: Каштан, English: Chestnut), with the N ...
, which uses both guns and missiles for final defense with two six-barrelled 30 mm
Gsh-6-30 Gatling guns and eight
9M311 surface-to-air missiles provide for its defensive capabilities.
Upsetting this development to all-missile systems is the current move to
stealth aircraft
Stealth aircraft are designed to avoid detection using a variety of technologies that reduce reflection/emission of radar, infrared, visible light, radio frequency (RF) spectrum, and audio, collectively known as stealth technology. The F-117 N ...
. Long range missiles depend on long-range detection to provide significant lead. Stealth designs cut detection ranges so much that the aircraft is often never even seen, and when it is, it is often too late for an intercept. Systems for detection and tracking of stealthy aircraft are a major problem for anti-aircraft development.
However, as
stealth technology
Stealth technology, also termed low observable technology (LO technology), is a sub-discipline of military tactics and passive and active electronic countermeasures, which covers a range of methods used to make personnel, aircraft, ships, subm ...
grows, so does anti-stealth technology. Multiple transmitter radars such as those from
bistatic radar
Bistatic radar is a radar system comprising a transmitter and receiver that are separated by a distance comparable to the expected target distance. Conversely, a conventional radar in which the transmitter and receiver are co-located is called ...
s and
low-frequency radars are said to have the capabilities to detect stealth aircraft. Advanced forms of
thermographic camera
Infrared thermography (IRT), thermal video and/or thermal imaging, is a process where a thermal camera captures and creates an image of an object by using infrared radiation emitted from the object in a process, which are examples of infrared ...
s such as those that incorporate
QWIPs would be able to optically see a Stealth aircraft regardless of the aircraft's
Radar Cross-Section
Radar cross-section (RCS), also called radar signature, is a measure of how detectable an object is by radar. A larger RCS indicates that an object is more easily detected.
An object reflects a limited amount of radar energy back to the source. ...
(RCS). In addition, Side looking radars, High-powered
optical
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...
satellite
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...
s, and sky-scanning, high-
aperture
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane.
An opt ...
, high sensitivity
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
s such as
radio telescope
A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency ...
s, would all be able to narrow down the location of a stealth aircraft under certain parameters. The newest SAMs have a claimed ability to be able to detect and engage stealth targets, with the most notable being the Russian
S-400
The S-400 Triumf (russian: link=no, C-400 Триумф – Triumf; translation: Triumph; NATO reporting name: SA-21 Growler), previously known as the S-300 PMU-3, is a mobile, surface-to-air missile (SAM) system developed in the 1990s by Russ ...
, which is claimed to be able to detect a target with a 0.05-metre squared RCS from 90 km away.
Another potential weapon system for anti-aircraft use is the
laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...
. Although air planners have imagined lasers in combat since the late 1960s, only the most modern laser systems are currently reaching what could be considered "experimental usefulness". In particular the
Tactical High Energy Laser
The Tactical High-Energy Laser, or THEL, was a laser developed for military use, also known as the Nautilus laser system. The mobile version is the Mobile Tactical High-Energy Laser, or MTHEL. In 1996, the United States and Israel entered into a ...
can be used in the anti-aircraft and anti-missile role.
ALKA is
directed-energy weapon
A directed-energy weapon (DEW) is a ranged weapon that damages its target with highly focused energy without a solid projectile, including lasers, microwaves, particle beams, and sound beams. Potential applications of this technology include we ...
(DEW) system is a Turkish dual electromagnetic/laser weapon developed by
Roketsan
Roketsan Roket Sanayii ve Ticaret A.S. is a major Turkish weapons manufacturer and defense contractor based in Ankara, Turkey. Incorporated in 1988 by Turkey's Defense Industry Executive Committee (''SSİK'') to establish the nation's industri ...
allegedly used to destroy one of
GNC's Wing Loong II
The Chengdu GJ-2, also known as Wing Loong 2, is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capable of remotely controlled or autonomous flight developed by the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group in the People's Republic of China. Intended for use as a surv ...
UAVs
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controlle ...
; if true, this would represent the first known time a vehicle mounted combat laser was used to destroy another combat vehicle during genuine wartime conditions.
The future of projectile based weapons may be found in the
railgun
A railgun or rail gun is a linear motor device, typically designed as a weapon, that uses Electromagnet, electromagnetic force to launch high velocity projectiles. The projectile normally does not contain explosives, instead relying on the proj ...
. Currently tests are underway on developing systems that could create as much damage as a
Tomahawk (missile)
The Tomahawk () Land Attack Missile (TLAM) is a long-range, all-weather, jet-powered, subsonic cruise missile that is primarily used by the United States Navy and Royal Navy in ship and submarine-based land-attack operations.
Under contract fr ...
, but at a fraction of the cost. In February 2008 the
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...
tested a railgun; it fired a shell at per hour using 10 megajoules of energy. Its expected performance is over per hour muzzle velocity, accurate enough to hit a 5-metre target from away while shooting at 10 shots per minute. It is expected to be ready in 2020 to 2025. These systems, while currently designed for static targets, would only need the ability to be retargeted to become the next generation of AA system.
Force structures
Most Western and Commonwealth militaries integrate air defence purely with the traditional services of the military (i.e.
army
An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...
,
navy
A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...
and
air force
An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an a ...
), as a
separate arm or as part of artillery. In the
British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
for instance, air defence is part of the artillery arm, while in the
Pakistan Army
The Pakistan Army (, ) is the Army, land service branch of the Pakistan Armed Forces. The roots of its modern existence trace back to the British Indian Army that ceased to exist following the partition of India, Partition of British India, wh ...
, it was split off from the artillery to form a separate arm of its own in 1990. This is in contrast to some (largely communist or ex-communist) countries where not only are there provisions for air defence in the army, navy and air force but there are specific branches that deal only with the air defence of territory, for example, the Soviet
PVO Strany
The Soviet Air Defence Forces (russian: войска ПВО, ''voyska protivovozdushnoy oborony'', ''voyska PVO'', ''V-PVO'', lit. ''Anti-Air Defence Troops''; and formerly ''protivovozdushnaya oborona strany'', ''PVO strany'', lit. ''Anti-Air De ...
. The
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
also had a separate strategic rocket force in charge of
nuclear
Nuclear may refer to:
Physics
Relating to the nucleus of the atom:
* Nuclear engineering
*Nuclear physics
*Nuclear power
*Nuclear reactor
*Nuclear weapon
*Nuclear medicine
*Radiation therapy
*Nuclear warfare
Mathematics
*Nuclear space
*Nuclear ...
intercontinental ballistic missile
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...
s.
Navy
![BGT IDAS](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/BGT_IDAS.jpg)
Smaller boats and ships typically have machine-guns or fast cannons, which can often be deadly to low-flying aircraft if linked to a
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
-directed
fire-control system
A fire-control system (FCS) is a number of components working together, usually a gun data computer, a director, and radar, which is designed to assist a ranged weapon system to target, track, and hit a target. It performs the same task as a ...
radar-controlled cannon for point defence. Some vessels like
Aegis
The aegis ( ; grc, αἰγίς ''aigís''), as stated in the ''Iliad'', is a device carried by Athena and Zeus, variously interpreted as an animal skin or a shield and sometimes featuring the head of a Gorgon. There may be a connection with a d ...
-equipped destroyers and cruisers are as much a threat to aircraft as any land-based air defence system. In general, naval vessels should be treated with respect by aircraft, however the reverse is equally true.
Carrier battle group
A carrier battle group (CVBG) is a naval fleet consisting of an aircraft carrier capital ship and its large number of escorts, together defining the group. The ''CV'' in ''CVBG'' is the United States Navy hull classification code for an airc ...
s are especially well defended, as not only do they typically consist of many vessels with heavy air defence armament but they are also able to launch
fighter jet
Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
s for
combat air patrol
Combat air patrol (CAP) is a type of flying mission for fighter aircraft. A combat air patrol is an aircraft patrol provided over an objective area, over the force protected, over the critical area of a combat zone, or over an air defense area, ...
overhead to intercept incoming airborne threats.
Nations such as Japan use their SAM-equipped vessels to create an outer air defence perimeter and
radar picket
A radar picket is a radar-equipped station, ship, submarine, aircraft, or vehicle used to increase the radar detection range around a nation or military (including naval) force to protect it from surprise attack, typically air attack, or from cr ...
in the defence of its Home islands, and the United States also uses its Aegis-equipped ships as part of its
Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System
The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (Aegis BMD or ABMD), also known as ''Sea-Based Midcourse'', is a United States Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency program developed to provide missile defense against short to intermediat ...
in the defence of the Continental United States.
Some modern submarines, such as the
Type 212 submarine
The German Type 212 class (German: U-Boot-Klasse 212 A), also Italian ''Todaro'' class, is a diesel-electric submarine developed by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG (HDW) for the German and Italian navies. It features diesel propulsion and an a ...
s of the
German Navy
The German Navy (, ) is the navy of Germany and part of the unified ''Bundeswehr'' (Federal Defense), the German Armed Forces. The German Navy was originally known as the ''Bundesmarine'' (Federal Navy) from 1956 to 1995, when ''Deutsche Mari ...
, are equipped with surface-to-air missile systems, since helicopters and
anti-submarine warfare
Anti-submarine warfare (ASW, or in older form A/S) is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, submarines, or other platforms, to find, track, and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines. Such operations are t ...
aircraft are significant threats. The subsurface launched anti-air missile was first purposed by US Navy Rear Admiral Charles B. Momsen, in a 1953 article.
Layered air defence
![RIM-67 intercepts Firebee drone at White Sands 1980](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/RIM-67_intercepts_Firebee_drone_at_White_Sands_1980.jpg)
Air defence in naval tactics, especially within a carrier group, is often built around a system of concentric layers with the aircraft carrier at the centre. The outer layer will usually be provided by the carrier's aircraft, specifically its
AEW&C aircraft combined with the
CAP
A cap is a flat headgear, usually with a visor. Caps have crowns that fit very close to the head. They made their first appearance as early as 3200 BC. Caps typically have a visor, or no brim at all. They are popular in casual and informal se ...
. If an attacker is able to penetrate this layer, then the next layers would come from the
surface-to-air missile
A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...
s carried by the carrier's escorts; the area-defence missiles, such as the
RIM-67 Standard
The RIM-67 Standard ER (SM-1ER/SM-2ER) is an extended range surface-to-air missile (SAM) and anti ship missile, anti-ship missile originally developed for the United States Navy (USN). The RIM-67 was developed as a replacement for the RIM-8 Talos ...
, with a range of up to 100 nmi, and the point-defence missiles, like the
RIM-162 ESSM
The RIM-162 Evolved SeaSparrow Missile (ESSM) is a development of the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missile used to protect ships from attacking missiles and aircraft. ESSM is designed to counter supersonic maneuvering anti-ship missiles. ESSM also has the ab ...
, with a range of up to 30 nmi. Finally, virtually every modern warship will be fitted with small-calibre guns, including a
CIWS
A close-in weapon system (CIWS ) is a point-defense weapon system for detecting and destroying short-range incoming missiles and enemy aircraft which have penetrated the outer defenses, typically mounted on a naval ship. Nearly all classes of l ...
, which is usually a radar-controlled
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon.
The Gatling gun's operation centered on a cyc ...
of between 20mm and 30mm calibre capable of firing several thousand rounds per minute.
Army
Armies typically have air defence in depth, from integral
man-portable air-defense system
Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) are portable surface-to-air missiles. They are guided weapons and are a threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters.
Overview
MANPADS were developed in the 1950s to provide military ...
s (MANPADS) such as the
RBS 70
RBS 70 (Robotsystem 70) is a man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS) designed for anti-aircraft warfare in all climate zones and with little to no support from other forces. Originally designed and manufactured by the Swedish defence firm of ...
,
Stinger
A stinger (or sting) is a sharp organ found in various animals (typically insects and other arthropods) capable of injecting venom, usually by piercing the epidermis of another animal.
An insect sting is complicated by its introduction of v ...
and
Igla at smaller force levels up to army-level missile defence systems such as
Angara
The Angara ( Buryat and mn, Ангар, ''Angar'', "Cleft"; russian: Ангара́, ''Angará'') is a major river in Siberia, which traces a course through Russia's Irkutsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai. It drains out of Lake Baikal and is ...
and
Patriot
A patriot is a person with the quality of patriotism.
Patriot may also refer to:
Political and military groups United States
* Patriot (American Revolution), those who supported the cause of independence in the American Revolution
* Patriot m ...
. Often, the high-altitude long-range missile systems force aircraft to fly at low level, where anti-aircraft guns can bring them down. As well as the small and large systems, for effective air defence there must be intermediate systems. These may be deployed at regiment-level and consist of platoons of self-propelled anti-aircraft platforms, whether they are
self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (SPAAGs), integrated air-defence systems like
Tunguska or all-in-one surface-to-air missile platforms like
Roland
Roland (; frk, *Hrōþiland; lat-med, Hruodlandus or ''Rotholandus''; it, Orlando or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the ...
or
SA-8 Gecko
The 9K33 ''Osa'' (, literally "wasp"; NATO reporting name SA-8 ''Gecko'') is a highly mobile, low-altitude, short-range tactical surface-to-air missile system developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and fielded in 1972. Its export version na ...
.
On a national level the United States Army was atypical in that it was primarily responsible for the missile air defences of the Continental United States with systems such as
Project Nike
Project Nike (Greek: Νίκη, "Victory") was a U.S. Army project, proposed in May 1945 by Bell Laboratories, to develop a line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. The project delivered the United States' first operational anti-aircraft mi ...
.
Air force
![Aircraft Combat Archer (2565196807)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Aircraft_Combat_Archer_%282565196807%29.jpg)
Air defence by air forces is typically provided by
fighter jet
Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
s carrying
air-to-air missile
The newest and the oldest member of Rafael's Python family of AAM for comparisons, Python-5 (displayed lower-front) and Shafrir-1 (upper-back)
An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying a ...
s. However, most air forces choose to augment airbase defence with surface-to-air missile systems as they are such valuable targets and subject to attack by enemy aircraft. In addition, some countries choose to put all air defence responsibilities under the air force.
Area air defence
Area air defence, the air defence of a specific area or location, (as opposed to
point defence
Point defence (or point defense; see spelling differences) is the defence of a single object or a limited area, e.g. a ship, building or an airfield, now usually against air attacks and guided missiles. Point defence weapons have a smaller range i ...
), have historically been operated by both armies (
Anti-Aircraft Command
Anti-Aircraft Command (AA Command, or "Ack-Ack Command") was a British Army command of the Second World War that controlled the Territorial Army anti-aircraft artillery and searchlight formations and units defending the United Kingdom.
Origin
...
in the British Army, for instance) and Air Forces (the
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
's
CIM-10 Bomarc
The Boeing CIM-10 BOMARC (Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center) (IM-99 Weapon System prior to September 1962) was a supersonic ramjet powered long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) used during the Cold War for the air defense of North ...
). Area defence systems have medium to long range and can be made up of various other systems and networked into an area defence system (in which case it may be made up of several short range systems combined to effectively cover an area). An example of area defence is the defence of Saudi Arabia and Israel by
MIM-104 Patriot
The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, the primary of its kind used by the United States Army and several allied states. It is manufactured by the U.S. defense contractor Raytheon and derives its name from the radar compon ...
missile batteries during the first
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...
, where the objective was to cover populated areas.
Tactics
Mobility
![Pantsir-S1 SAM at Engineering Technologies 2012](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Pantsir-S1_SAM_at_Engineering_Technologies_2012.jpg)
Most modern air defence systems are fairly mobile. Even the larger systems tend to be mounted on trailers and are designed to be fairly quickly broken down or set up. In the past, this was not always the case. Early missile systems were cumbersome and required much infrastructure; many could not be moved at all. With the diversification of air defence there has been much more emphasis on mobility. Most modern systems are usually either self-propelled (i.e. guns or missiles are mounted on a truck or tracked chassis) or towed. Even systems that consist of many components (
transporter/erector/launchers,
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
s, command posts etc.) benefit from being mounted on a fleet of vehicles. In general, a fixed system can be identified, attacked and destroyed whereas a mobile system can show up in places where it is not expected. Soviet systems especially concentrate on mobility, after the lessons learnt in the
Vietnam war
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
between the US and Vietnam. For more information on this part of the conflict, see
SA-2 Guideline
The S-75 (Russian: С-75; NATO reporting name SA-2 Guideline) is a Soviet-designed, high-altitude air defence system, built around a surface-to-air missile with command guidance. Following its first deployment in 1957 it became one of the most w ...
.
Air defence versus air defence suppression
![AGM-88 and AIM-9 on Tornado](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/AGM-88_and_AIM-9_on_Tornado.jpg)
Israel and the US Air Force, in conjunction with the members of
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
, have developed significant tactics for
air defence suppression. Dedicated weapons such as
anti-radiation missile
An anti-radiation missile (ARM) is a missile designed to detect and home in on an enemy radio emission source. Typically, these are designed for use against an enemy radar, although jammers and even radios used for communications can also be ...
s and advanced
electronics intelligence
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...
and
electronic countermeasures
An electronic countermeasure (ECM) is an electrical or electronic device designed to trick or deceive radar, sonar, or other detection systems, like infrared (IR) or lasers. It may be used both offensively and defensively to deny targeting info ...
platforms seek to suppress or negate the effectiveness of an opposing air-defence system. It is an arms race; as better jamming, countermeasures and anti-radiation weapons are developed, so are better SAM systems with
ECCM capabilities and the ability to shoot down anti-radiation missiles and other munitions aimed at them or the targets they are defending.
Insurgent tactics
Rocket-propelled grenades
A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) is a shoulder-fired missile weapon that launches rockets equipped with an explosive warhead. Most RPGs can be carried by an individual soldier, and are frequently used as anti-tank weapons. These warheads are ...
can be—and often are—used against hovering helicopters (e.g., by Somali militiamen during the
Battle of Mogadishu (1993)
The Battle of Mogadishu ( so, Maalintii Rangers, translation=Day of the Rangers), also known as the Black Hawk Down incident, was part of Operation Gothic Serpent. It was fought on 3–4 October 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, between forces of t ...
). Firing an RPG at steep angles poses a danger to the user, because the backblast from firing reflects off the ground. In Somalia, militia members sometimes welded a steel plate onto the exhaust end of an RPG's tube to deflect pressure away from the shooter when shooting up at US helicopters. RPGs are used in this role only when more effective weapons are not available.
Another example of using RPGs against helicopters is
Operation ANACONDA
Operation Anaconda was a military operation that took place in early March 2002 as part of the War in Afghanistan. CIA paramilitary officers, working with their allies, attempted to destroy al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. The operation took plac ...
in March 2002 in Afghanistan. Taliban Insurgents defending
Shah-i-Kot Valley
The Shah-i-Kot Valley (also Shahi-Kot, Shah-e-Kot and other variant spellings) is a valley in Afghanistan's Paktia province, southeast of the town of Zormat. The terrain in and around the valley is notoriously rugged, located at a mean altitude o ...
used RPGs in the direct fire rol
against landing helicopters Four rangers were killed when their helicopter was shot down by an RPG and SEAL team member Neil C. Roberts fell out of his helicopter when it was hit by two RPG. In other instances helicopters have been shot down in Afghanistan during a mission in Wardak province. One feature that makes RPGs useful in air defence is that they are fused to automatically detonate at 920 m. If aimed into the air this causes the warhead to airburst which can release a limited but potentially damaging amount of shrapnel hitting a helicopter landing or taking off.
For insurgents the most effective method of
countering aircraft is to attempt to destroy them on the ground, either by penetrating an airbase perimeter and destroying aircraft individually, e.g. the
September 2012 Camp Bastion raid
The September 2012 raid on Camp Bastion was a Taliban raid on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan's Helmand province on the night of 14 September 2012. The base hosted British, American, Danish and Tongan military personnel at the time of the attack ...
, or finding a position where aircraft can be engaged with indirect fire, such as mortars. A recent trend emerging during the
Syrian Civil War is the use of
ATGM
An anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), anti-tank missile, anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) or anti-armor guided weapon is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy heavily armored military vehicles. ATGMs range in size from shoulder ...
against landing helicopters.
See also
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Air supremacy
Aerial supremacy (also air superiority) is the degree to which a side in a conflict holds control of air power over opposing forces. There are levels of control of the air in aerial warfare. Control of the air is the aerial equivalent of com ...
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Artillery
Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...
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Gun laying
A gun is a ranged weapon designed to use a shooting tube (gun barrel) to launch projectiles. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns/cannons, spray guns for painting or pressure washi ...
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List of anti-aircraft weapons
List of anti-aircraft weapons. See also anti-aircraft warfare.
Canada
* Air Defense Anti-Tank System (ADATS)
* Oerlikon
* AMADS – Advanced man-portable air defence system
Finland
* T-55A Marksman
* SAKO 23 mm/87
* 23 ItK 95
----- Fra ...
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Self-propelled anti-aircraft weapon
An anti-aircraft vehicle, also known as a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) or self-propelled air defense system (SPAD), is a mobile vehicle with a dedicated anti-aircraft capability.
Specific weapon systems used include machine guns, ...
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The bomber will always get through
"The bomber will always get through" was a phrase used by Stanley Baldwin in a 1932 speech "A Fear for the Future" given to the British Parliament. His speech stated that contemporary bomber aircraft had the performance necessary to conduct a s ...
References
Citations
Sources
* AAP-6 NATO Glossary of Terms. 2009.
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* Bethel, Colonel HA. 1911. "Modern Artillery in the Field". London: Macmillan and Co Ltd
* Checkland, Peter and Holwell, Sue. 1998. "Information, Systems and Information Systems – making sense of the field". Chichester: Wiley
* Gander, T 2014. "The Bofors gun", 3rd edn. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military.
* Hogg, Ian V. 1998. "Allied Artillery of World War Two". Malborough: The Crowood Press
* Hogg, Ian V. 1998. "Allied Artillery of World War One" Malborough: The Crowood Press
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*
* Handbook for the Ordnance, Q.F. 3.7-inch Mark II on Mounting, 3.7-inch A.A. Mark II – Land Service. 1940. London: War Office 26, Manuals, 2494
* History of the Ministry of Munitions. 1922. Volume X The Supply of Munitions, Part VI Anti-Aircraft Supplies. Reprinted by Naval & Military Press Ltd and Imperial War Museum.
* Flavia Foradini: ''I bunker di Vienna", Abitare 2/2006, Milano
* Flavia Foradini, Edoardo Conte: ''I templi incompiuti di Hitler", catalogo della mostra omonima, Milano, Spazio Guicciardini, 17.2-13.3.2009
External links
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''1914 1918 war in Alsace – The Battle of Linge 1915 – The 63rd Anti Aircraft Regiment in 14 18 – The 96th poste semi-fixed in the Vosges''by Kenneth P. Werrell (book available for download)
2nd/3rd Australian Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anti-Aircraft Warfare
Anti-aircraft warfare,
Military aviation
Warfare by type