Airplanes are unique among battlefield targets: hard to hit, but easy to kill. Even the least capable of them can reach speeds measured in hundreds of miles per hour and altitudes measured in tens of thousands of feet. Even the clumsiest can maneuver in three dimensions. Even the most robust airplane, however, is basically fragile: slender structural members and a thin skin wrapped around delicate electronic, hydraulic, and mechanical systems; highly volatile fuel; and a pilot whose only personal “armor” is a cloth flight suit and plastic helmet. Unlike a building, ship, or land vehicle, an airplane cannot be “hardened” against enemy fire except in limited ways and at a terrible cost in performance. Its best defense is its ability to avoid being hit; when that defense fails and a projectile hits, damage is virtually certain. Guided missiles made attractive antiaircraft weapons for two reasons: they increased the chances of a hit, and increased the chances of a hit causing lethal damage.

Both superpowers developed antiaircraft missiles during the 1950s, and both did so with the problem of homeland defense firmly in mind. ICBMs were still in their technological infancy in the late 1950s—crude, inaccurate, and unreliable—and the piloted bomber was still the weapon of choice for long-range strategic attacks. The defensive plans of both superpowers were built, therefore, around the problem of stopping long-range bombers, and antiaircraft missiles were designed primarily with bombers in mind. Early surface-to-air missiles (like the Soviet-made SA-2) and air-to-air missiles (like the American-made Sidewinder) tended to be optimized for a specific mission: destroying big airplanes flying relatively straight-and-level courses at relatively high altitudes. Designers also assumed that the missiles would be stored and maintained at well-equipped, permanent airbases, and deployed only in the face of an imminent threat. These assumptions made the problem of designing a successful missile seem less difficult than it might have, and encouraged optimism on the part of both aerospace contractors and military customers. Firing tests, often designed to maximize the missile’s chances of success, reinforced the optimism.

Two early uses of antiaircraft missiles in the “real world” heightened expectations even further. On September 24, 1958, pilots from the Communist and Nationalist Chinese air forces met in the skies over the disputed islands of Quemoy and Matsu. The Communist pilots had numbers and experience on their side, but the Nationalist pilots had technology: brandnew, heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles mounted beneath the wings of their F-86 fighters. Nationalist pilots destroyed ten enemy aircraft in a matter of minutes, while losing none of their own. The Communists, startled by a weapon they could neither match nor evade, broke off the battle and ceded the airspace over Quemoy and Matsu to the Nationalists. Less than two years later, a single SA-2 surface-to-air missile knocked an American U-2 reconnaissance plane out of the sky over the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk. The plane crashed, the pilot ejected, and the Soviets triumphantly displayed both to a world that had just heard President Dwight Eisenhower categorically deny their existence. The loss of the plane and the capture of CIA-trained pilot Francis Gary Powers was a diplomatic black eye for the United States, but it was a revelation for military leaders interested in the problem of air defense. The U-2 was designed to fly so high that no antiaircraft weapon could touch it, but a surface-to-air missile had brought it down with ease (another SA-2 would destroy another U-2 in October 1962). If the new missiles could touch even the “untouchable” U-2, they could easily deal with the bigger, lower flying bombers.

Fueled by this optimism, both superpowers developed a wide range of antiaircraft missiles in the late 1950s and early 1960s: air-to-air as well as surface-to-air, radar-guided as well as heat-seeking. Just as important, they increased their reliance on guided missiles in air defense and aerial combat. The Soviet Union pioneered a new style of air defense that integrated guns, surface-to-air missiles, and radar installations into a centrally controlled network. Over the next two decades, they would export both the concept and the technology to their allies and client states: North Vietnam, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq among them. Both superpowers made air-to-air part of the standard missiles of their fighters’ armament, and the United States went further still: introducing fighters armed solely with missiles. The first missile-only fighter, the Air Force’s F-102 Delta Dagger, entered service in 1956. The Navy’s F-4 Phantom, later adopted by the Air Force as well, followed in 1961. Most American fighters of the period carried both missiles and cannon, but planners and pilots alike expected missiles to be their primary weapon. Why close to 2,000 feet or less (the maximum effective range for cannon) if you could fire from 3,000 feet (the minimum effective range for missiles) or more? The American preference for missile-armed airplanes reflected the American military’s faith in missiles’ effectiveness. Studies in the early 1960s confidently predicted that, in combat, the radarguided Sparrow would hit its target 65 percent of the time and the heatseeking Sidewinder would hit 71 percent of the time.

The Vietnam War put both superpowers’ missiles—and assumptions about them—to their first real test. North Vietnam’s air defenses in mid- 1964 consisted of three dozen jet fighters, 1,000 antiaircraft guns, a few radar stations, and no missiles at all. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, however, the Soviet Union began to supply missiles, launchers, and additional radar sets, as well as advisors, to oversee their construction and train their North Vietnamese crews. By the time Operation Rolling Thunder—U.S. air attacks on North Vietnam—began in March 1965, North Vietnam had a Soviet-style integrated network of missiles, guns, and radar with which to meet them. The United States, meanwhile, deployed large numbers of missile-armed fighters in combat for the first time: Navy F-4 Phantoms and F-8 Crusaders from aircraft carriers in the South China Sea, and Air Force F-4s from bases in Thailand. Soviet-built MiG-21s, deployed in early 1966, gave the North Vietnamese Air Force their own missile-armed fighters: each carried two AA-2 heat-seeking missiles (similar to the Sidewinder) in addition to cannon.

The air war over Vietnam lasted, with only a few brief pauses, from 1965 until 1973. It was the first full-scale war in which both sides had used missiles against aircraft, and the first sustained use of missiles in combat. On one hand, it confirmed what the Chinese dogfight of 1958 and the U-2 shoot-downs of 1960 and 1962 had suggested: missiles could be devastatingly effective against undefended airplanes flown by unaware pilots. On the other hand, however, it showed that neither condition was likely to persist in wartime. Both sides were at first caught unprepared by the missile threat, but both sides (the United States and Soviet-backed North Vietnam) quickly moved to prepare better defenses. Both sides, too, quickly learned the limitations of the other’s missiles. Tactics changed, new countermeasures entered service, and the combat effectiveness of missiles diminished.

American air-to-air missiles, in particular,were dogged by performance problems. Designed for use against high-flying, slow-moving bombers, they proved to be badly adapted for use against low-flying, highly maneuverable fighters. Both the Sidewinder’s infrared sensors and the Sparrow’s radar guidance system were prone to lose track of low-flying targets amid the “noise” of other heat sources and radar echoes from the ground. Both missiles were complicated to fire, neither could be fired within 3,000 feet of a target, and both had trouble following enemy fighters through tight turns. North Vietnamese pilots adapted their tactics to these shortcomings. When they spotted a missile (especially easy with the Sparrow, because of its prominent smoke trail), they turned sharply and dove for the treetops. Both missiles—the Sparrow in particular—also suffered from reliability problems. Tropical humidity and salt air damaged electronic circuitry, rough roads and carrier-deck landings jarred fragile systems into failure, and maintenance took place under less-than-ideal conditions with limited tools and supplies.

Prewar forecasts predicted two hits for every three air-to-air missiles fired.Wartime results, however, fell well short of that goal. Air Force pilots attempted to fire Sparrows sixteen times in April and May 1965; three failed to fire, and only one of the remaining thirteen hit its target—a 6 percent hit rate that improved only marginally by 1968. Navy crews fired twelve Sparrows in the same two-month period, achieving four hits for a 25 percent hit rate—a significant improvement on the Air Force’s record, but still well short of expectations. Six of twenty-one Sidewinders fired during April and May hit their targets (28 percent). One squadron commander, responding to his pilots’ frustration with missile performance in 1965, said: “Guys, they don’t call them hittles” (Michel 1997, 44). Incremental upgrades were made to both Sparrow and Sidewinder during the war, but they did little to improve performance. During the last years of direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam (1971–1973), the hit rate for both Sparrows and Sidewinders hovered just below 12 percent and that for the Falcon—a new heat-seeking missile ordered by the Air Force as a successor to the Sidewinder—around 16 percent (two hits in twelve launches). The Navy’s new “G” model of the Sidewinder was the only bright spot: its twenty-three hits in fifty firings gave it an astounding (for the time) hit rate of 46 percent.

The bomber crews and mission planners responsible for attacks on North Vietnam were, simultaneously, learning the weaknesses of North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). The SA-2 was big—often compared to a flying telephone pole—and relatively unmaneuverable. Like the Sparrow and Sidewinder, it had been designed to destroy big, sluggish bombers at high altitude. American pilots adjusted their tactics to exploit these weaknesses, flying low on their runs to and from the target, and “popping up” at the last moment to release their bombs. Mission planners also made adjustments to deal with the SAM threat. Attack aircraft carried radar-jamming equipment along with bombs, and specialized radar-jamming aircraft accompanied raids. Specially equipped aircraft dubbed “Wild Weasels” led the raids, attacking enemy missiles sites with bombs, gunfire, and new types of radiation-seeking missiles that homed in on SAM sites’ targeting radar. A typical late-war mission, flown on May 10, 1972, consisted of thirty-two bombers escorted by twenty-eight fighters to defend against MiGs and twenty-seven escorts ( jammers and Wild Weasels) to defend against SAMs.

The arrival of Soviet-made SA-7s on the battlefield in 1972 forced American pilots and planners to change their tactics again. A lightweight, heat-seeking missile designed to be carried and fired by a single soldier, the SA-7 was effective where the SA-2 was not: at ranges under 2 miles and altitudes below 10,000 feet. Low-level attacks became far more dangerous and, as a result, far less common. Modern jets like the F-4 and the F-105 Thunderchief took to higher altitudes, trusting jamming equipment,Wild Weasel escorts, and their own maneuverability to keep them safe. Slower, less maneuverable aircraft like the aging, propeller-driven A-1 Skyraider were pulled off the battlefield. Helicopters, though extremely vulnerable to SA-7s (it took an average of 135 SA-7s to kill an F-4, and 10 even for an A-1, but only 1.8 for a helicopter) remained in service. They were too valuable to the U.S. war effort to consider withdrawing them.

The Vietnam War demonstrated both the power and the limitations of antiaircraft missiles. The Arab-Israeli war of 1973 reinforced those lessons. Egypt and Syria, whose air forces had been destroyed on the ground by Israeli air strikes at the start of the 1967 war, fortified strategic areas with belts of antiaircraft defenses—integrated networks of radar, missiles, and guns like those used by North Vietnam. Egypt, for example, deployed 150 SA-2 and SA-3 batteries, dozens of mobile SA-6 batteries, and thousands of guns and shoulder-fired SA-7s. Sixty batteries were allotted to the Suez Canal alone. The Israeli Air Force lost 115 aircraft (one-third of its prewar strength) in nineteen days of fighting, all but four to the Arab nations’ ground-based air defense networks.

Eight years of relative peace (1973–1982) followed the American withdrawal from Vietnam and the negotiated truce between Israel and its neighbors. Over those eight years, a new generation of missiles reached service. Deployed in a series of conflicts in the early 1980s, they showed that both antiaircraft missiles had reached a new level of sophistication.

On August 19, 1981, a pair of Libyan combat aircraft threatened elements of the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet operating in international waters off the coast of Libya. A pair of F-14 Tomcat fighters from the aircraft carrier Nimitz quickly destroyed both Libyan intruders, using upgraded versions of the once-troubled Sparrow. An upgraded version of the Sidewinder served the British well in their war with Argentina the following year: of twentysix missiles fired in twenty-three engagements, roughly 90 percent hit their targets. Estimates of Argentine losses to Sidewinders varied from sixteen to twenty aircraft, but even the lowest of those figures gave the Sidewinder a kill ratio of 61 percent—five times the U.S. average in Vietnam a decade earlier. Israel’s 1982 attacks on guerilla bases inside Syria produced similar results: eighty-four Soviet-built Syrian fighters destroyed with Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles, including sixty-four in the first two days of fighting alone. The “one shot, one kill” dreams of 1950s missile designers had become reality, and missiles had displaced guns as the dominant weapon in aerial combat.

Antiaircraft missiles fired from the ground also achieved fresh successes in the 1980s, notably during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979– 1989). Agents of the Central Intelligence Agency supplied hundreds of U.S.-made Stinger missiles to Afghan guerillas beginning in mid-1986. The Stinger, a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking weapon with a range of 3–5 miles, inflicted devastating losses on low-flying Soviet aircraft—especially the heavily armed helicopter gunships that had been the Soviets’ most potent weapon. Soviet commanders pulled the helicopters back to higher altitudes in response, reducing their vulnerability but also their effectiveness. The potent, portable Stinger fitted perfectly with the guerillas’ hit-and-run strategy, and the losses it inflicted reinforced the Soviet government’s decision to withdraw.