MIM-23 Hawk

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MIM-23 Hawk
Type	Surface-to-air missile
Place of origin	United States
Service history
In service	August 1960[1]–present
Wars	Cold War War of Attrition Chadian-Libyan War Iran-Iraq War Gulf War Second Libyan Civil War 2020 Turkish intervention in Libya Russo-Ukrainian War Russian invasion of Ukraine
Production history
Manufacturer	Raytheon Company
Specifications
Mass	1,290 pounds (590 kg)
Length	16 feet 8 inches (5.08 m)
Diameter	14.5 inches (370 mm)
Wingspan	3 feet 11 inches (1.19 m)
Warhead	119 pounds (54 kg) blast fragmentation warhead
Engine	solid-fuel rocket engine
Operational range	28–31 mi (45–50 km)
Flight ceiling	65,000 feet (20,000 m)
Maximum speed	Mach 2.4
Guidance system	Semi-active radar homing

The Raytheon MIM-23 HAWK ("Homing All the Way Killer")^[2] is an American medium-range surface-to-air missile. It was designed to be a much more mobile counterpart to the MIM-14 Nike Hercules, trading off range and altitude capability for a much smaller size and weight. Its low-level performance was greatly improved over Nike through the adoption of new radars and a continuous wave semi-active radar homing guidance system. It entered service with the US Army in 1959.

In 1971 it underwent a major improvement program as the Improved Hawk, or I-Hawk, which made several improvements to the missile and replaced all of the radar systems with new models. Improvements continued throughout the next twenty years, adding improved ECCM, a potential home-on-jam feature, and in 1995, a new warhead that made it capable against short-range tactical ballistic missiles. Jane's reported that the original system's single shot kill probability was 0.56; I-Hawk improved this to 0.85.^[3]

Hawk was superseded by the MIM-104 Patriot in US Army service by 1994. The last US user was the US Marine Corps, who used theirs until 2002 when they were replaced with the man-portable short-range FIM-92 Stinger. The missile was also produced outside the US in Western Europe, Japan and Iran.^[4] The US never used the Hawk in combat, but it has been employed numerous times by other nations. Approximately 40,000 of the missiles were produced.