![]() The Royal Canadian Navy carries Harpoon missiles on its Halifax-class frigates. ![]() The British Royal Navy deploys the Harpoon on several types of surface ship. The Spanish Air Force and the Chilean Navy are also AGM-84D customers, and they deploy the missiles on surface ships, and F/A-18s, F-16s, and P-3 Orion aircraft. The Royal Australian Navy deploys the Harpoon on major surface combatants and in the Collins-class submarines. The Royal Australian Air Force is capable of firing AGM-84 series missiles from its F/A-18F Super Hornets, F/A-18A/B Hornets, and AP-3C Orion aircraft, and previously from the now retired F-111C/Gs. The Harpoon was purchased by many American allies, including Pakistan, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates and most NATO countries. The Harpoon has also been adapted for carriage on several aircraft, such as the P-3 Orion, the A-6 Intruder, the S-3 Viking, the AV-8B Harrier II, and the F/A-18 Hornet and U.S. Harpoon was primarily developed for use on US Navy warships such as the Ticonderoga-class cruiser as their principal anti-ship weapon system. In 1970 Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo Zumwalt accelerated the development of Harpoon as part of his "Project Sixty" initiative, hoping to add much needed striking power to US surface combatants. The sinking of the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967 by a Soviet-built Styx anti-ship missile shocked senior United States Navy officers, who until then had not been conscious of the threat posed by anti-ship missiles. a harpoon to kill "whales", a naval slang term for submarines). The name Harpoon was assigned to the project (i.e. In 1965 the United States Navy began studies for a missile in the 45 kilometres (24 nmi) range class for use against surfaced submarines. Coastal defense batteries, from which it would be fired with a solid-fuel rocket booster.Submarines (the UGM-84, fitted with a solid-fuel rocket booster and encapsulated in a container to enable submerged launch through a torpedo tube).Surface ships (the RGM-84, fitted with a solid-fuel rocket booster that detaches when expended, to allow the missile's main turbojet to maintain flight).Fixed-wing aircraft (the AGM-84, without the solid-fuel rocket booster).The regular Harpoon uses active radar homing, and a low-level, sea-skimming cruise trajectory to improve survivability and lethality. ![]() ![]() The missile system has also been further developed into a land-strike weapon, the Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM). In 2004, Boeing delivered the 7,000th Harpoon unit since the weapon's introduction in 1977. The Harpoon is an all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile system, developed and manufactured by McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing Defense, Space & Security). ![]()
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