Hawk missile battery

The Raytheon MIM-23 HAWK is an American medium range surface-to-air missile. As a backronym, some consider HAWK to stand for Homing All the Way Killer. The HAWK was initially designed to destroy aircraft and was later adapted to destroy other missiles in flight. The missile entered service in 1960, and a program of extensive upgrades has kept it from becoming obsolete. It was superseded by the MIM-104 Patriot in United States Army service by 1994. It was finally phased out of US service in 2002, the last users, the US Marine Corps replacing it with the man-portable ir-guided visual range FIM-92 Stinger. The missile was also produced outside the US in Western Europe and Japan.

Although the United States never used the Hawk in a combat situation, it has been employed numerous times by foreign nations. Approximately 40,000 of the missiles were produced.

Janes reports that the original systems single shot kill probability was 0.56, I-HAWK improved this to 0.85.

Similar Soviet systems are the SA-3 and SA-6.