Weapons

Meet the LRASM Missile: The Navy's Latest Ship Killer

On October 11, 1967, the Israeli destroyer Eilat was sunk by three P15 cruise missiles fired by two dinky sixty-one-ton patrol boats of the Egyptian Navy firing from nearly twenty miles away. The realization dawned on navies across the world that long-range “over-the-horizon” missiles had replaced the gun, torpedo and aerial bomb as the preeminent antiship weapon in naval warfare. German air-launched antiship missiles had already scored some notable successes during World War II, but now it was clear that even small surface combatants could be capable launch platforms.

A decade later, the U.S. Navy debuted the AGM-84 Harpoon missile, a subsonic sea-skimming weapon with a 488-pound warhead that came in variants that could fire from a ship, a submarine or an airplane. The Harpoon still serves with dozens of countries on platforms including Type 209 submarines of the Turkish Navy, modified Fokker 50 airliners of the Singaporean Air Force and early-model Arleigh Burke–class destroyers of the U.S. Navy. The land-attack SLAM-ER variant remains an important standoff weapon for Navy fighters. The antiship Harpoon has also seen action in a number of naval skirmishes, sinking several missile boats.