Archie to SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air ...

FROM GUNS TO MISSILES
Figure 47. Hawk intercepting an F-80. The Hawk was the Army’s first
mobile SAM. It had a long and distinguished career, although it did not
down any aircraft for the United States. This sequence shows what it
could do against an F-80 drone. (Reprinted from Redstone Arsenal.)
64 launching tubes would have the capability of firing at a rate
of 6,000 shots per minute. But the Army terminated this project
in February 1956. 46
Mauler was another system that failed to become operational
(fig. 48). In the mid-1950s, the Army desired a radarguided
missile system that would be highly mobile and provide
short-range, all-weather, low-altitude air defense protection. It
ran into funding and technical problems, and as its historian
explains, Murphy’s Law prevailed. Weight grew as requirements
increased. The Army wanted the entire system mounted
on one lightly armored vehicle that could be carried by a C-123,
C-130, or Chinook helicopter. As one Army colonel put it: “We
are essentially compressing a Hawk system into 1/30th of the
94