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Wild Weasel

This article is about an air combat mission. For the G.I. Joe character, see Wild Weasel (G.I. Joe).

An F-4G with WW payload; near to far: AGM-88 HARM, AGM-65 Maverick, ALQ-119 ECM pod, AGM-78 Standard ARM and AGM-45 Shrike, circa 1981.
Wild Weasel patch. The letters at the bottom stand for "You gotta be shitting me."[a]

Wild Weasel is a code name given by the United States Air Force (USAF) to an aircraft of any type equipped with anti-radiation missiles and tasked with the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD): destroying the radar and surface-to-air missile (SAM) installations of enemy air defense systems.[1][2] The task of a Wild Weasel aircraft is to bait enemy anti-aircraft defenses into targeting it with their radars, whereupon the radar waves are traced back to their source, allowing the Weasel or its teammates to precisely target it for destruction.

The Wild Weasel concept was developed by the USAF in 1965 during the Vietnam War after the introduction of Soviet SAMs and their downing of American strike aircraft participating in Operation Rolling Thunder in the skies over North Vietnam.[3] The program was headed by General Kenneth Dempster. "The first Wild Weasel success came soon after the first Wild Weasel mission 20 December 1965 when Captains Al Lamb and Jack Donovan took out a site during a Rolling Thunder strike on the railyard at Yen Bai, some 75 mi (120 km) northwest of Hanoi."[4] Wild Weasel tactics and techniques were later adapted by other nations in subsequent conflicts, as well as being integrated into the suppression of enemy air defenses, a plan used by U.S. air forces to establish immediate air supremacy prior to possible full-scale conflict.[2]

Initially known by the operational code "Iron Hand" when first authorized on 12 August 1965, the term "Wild Weasel" derives from Project Wild Weasel, the USAF development program for a dedicated SAM-detection and suppression aircraft.[5] The technique was also called an "Iron Hand" mission, though technically this term referred only to the suppression attack before the main strike.[6] Originally named "Project Ferret", denoting a predatory animal that goes into its prey's den to kill it (hence: "to ferret out"), the name was changed to differentiate it from the code-name "Ferret" that had been used during World War II for radar countermeasures bombers.


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  1. ^ Van Riper, A. Bowdoin (2004). Rockets and missiles: the life story of a technology. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 188. ISBN 0-313-32795-5.
  2. ^ a b Hewitt, W.A. Planting the seeds of SEAD: The Wild Weasel in Vietnam Archived 1 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine. School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, PhD Thesis. May 1992. Accessed 5 October 2009.
  3. ^ Davies pp. 4, 5
  4. ^ Walter J. Boyne. Beyond the Wild Blue, A History of the U.S. Air Force 1947–1997. p. 158.
  5. ^ "What is a Wild Weasel?". National Museum of the United States Air Force™. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  6. ^ Iron Hand (National Museum of the United States Air Force website. Accessed 26 January 2009.) Archived 20 May 2007 at the Wayback Machine
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