Home > Anti-aircraft
right American troops man an anti-aircraft gun near the Algerian coastline in 1943Anti-aircraft, or air defense, is any method of combating military aircraft from the ground. Various guns and cannons have been used in this role since the first military aircraft were used in World War I, growing in power and accuracy over the years.
Starting in the post- World War II era the guns were joined by the guided missile, specifically the" surface-to-air missile", and today both are used in combination in most roles.
Adaptations of standard artillery systems were commonly used for most long-range anti-aircraft artillery, starting with standard pieces on new mountings, and evolving to custom guns with much higher performance prior to World War II. There shells are usually fitted with different types of fuzes (barometric (air pressure), time-delay, or proximity) to send exploding "flak" into a specified area. The classic example of a large, long-range anti-aircraft gun the German 88 mm gun. Long range weapons of this sort were replaced outright with the introduction of missile systems in the 1950s.
For shorter-range work a lighter weapon with a higher rate of fire is required, to guarantee a hit on a quickly traversing target. Weapons of 20 mm, 37 mm and 40 mm have been widely used in this role. Unlike the heavier guns, these smaller weapons are still in widespread use today for the same reasons as they were originally introduced, that missile systems cannot traverse or react fast enough to targets that are manuvering close to the ground. Modern systems often use weapons originally intended for air-to-ground use, and are known as autocannon. The very latest of short-range missiles appear to be able to replace guns even in this role.
Nicknames for anti-aircraft guns include AAA or triple-A for anti-aircraft artillery, ack-ack (from the World War I phonetic alphabet for AA), archie (a WWI British term believed to derive via the Royal Flying Corps from the music-hall comedian George Robey's line "Archibald, certainly not!"), and flak (from the GermanGerman (called Deutsch in German in which germanisch refers to prechristian times), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and one of the world's major languages. It is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union. Flugabwehrkanonen, aircraft defense guns). An anti-aircraft missile is a ground-based missileA missile (British English: "miss isle"; U. English: "missl") is, in general, a projectile—that is, something thrown or otherwise propelled. Missiles can range from a rock thrown from a slingshot, through a crossbow or ballista bolt, to a Minuteman III in used to destroy aircraft.
The U.S. NavyThe United States Navy USN is the branch of the United States armed forces responsible for naval operations. Navy consists of slightly fewer than 300 ships and over 4,000 operational aircraft. It has over a half million men and women on active or ready re uses the acronym AAW to stand for anti-air warfare; most groups of ships will have a designated AAW commander among them. In the RussianThe Russian Federation ( Russian: , transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija , or Russia (Russian: , transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija , is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. With Army, Air Defense is a separate armed service , reflecting its extreme importance in Russian doctrine. The United States ArmyThe Army is the branch of the United States armed forces which has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. As of fiscal year 2002 (FY02), it consisted of 480,000 soldiers on active duty and 555,000 in reserve (350,000 in Army National G has disdained air defense for ground units, counting on achieving air superiority. This has left a gap in American military equipment between the man-portable StingerLight to carry and easy to operate, the FIM-92 Stinger is a passive infrared homing surface-to-air missile, shoulder-fired by a single operator and designed to attack aircraft at a range of up to 15,700 feet (4,800 m) and at heights from 600 to 12,500 fee and the theater anti-missile system PatriotThe MIM-104 Patriot is a US medium-range surface-to-air missile system manufactured by the Raytheon Company. It succeeded the Nike-Hercules Missile for high and medium altitude air defense in the US Army arsenal. Conceived in the 1960s and in development.
