"Richard Bell" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Peter Skelton wrote:

Think harder.

The USN is not nearly as motivated as the air force to develop an
air-based way to take out surface ships because their primary
weapon against them is the submarine.

The USN is probably better off overall if surface ships are hard
to take out from the air. It protects their submarine arm from
their real enemy, the USAF, on the battlefield that matters,
appropriations.

If I recall correctly, the harpoon anti-shipping missile was sort of a
happy
accident. In that it was much more useful than merely allowing a P-3
Orion
to engage a surfaced submarine, before it had already launched all of the
cruise missiles and dived.

Not quite. While the initial thought back in the mid-sixties was to develop
a missile aimed primarily at surfaced subs, that soon changed to give
primacy to the anti-ship attack role (the loss of the Eilat in '67
apparently being something of an impetus). When development formally began
in '68 the goal was already aimed at the anti-shipping role, and the first
version developed and fielded was the surface launched variant. You can get
the actual history at:

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-84.html

That site has proven to be pretty reliable when it comes to missile systems.

Brooks