RAF Retires ALARM Missile

摘要

The Royal Air Force has retired the Air-Launched Anti-Radiation Missile (ALARM), it has recently been revealed. The Ministry of Defence has confirmed it was withdrawn at the end of December. Designed to destroy or suppress the use of enemy ground-based air-defence radar systems, the weapon was developed by British Aerospace Dynamics in the 1980s after being selected on July 29,1983, in a two-way competition against the US High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) for a Ministry of Defence order. ALARM was developed to provide the RAF Tornado force with a suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) capability and its withdrawal leaves the RAF without a dedicated SEAD weapon. It made its operational debut in the 1991 Gulf War and has been in the inventory of the ground attack variants of the Tornado ever since, latterly comprising the GR4 model.