Talk:Surface-to-air missile

Passage removal

I have removed this passage- "SAMs were the number one Soviet Union Force in the October War, mainly the smaller Soviet SA-6." It is poorly written and in fact I have very little of an idea of what they are trying to say. I have replaced the sentence with one of my own design.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg 10:55, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

New Picture of Missile Firing

A picture of the Missile Firing has been added. --Chanakyathegreat 07:00, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Manpads

Manpads has been removed from the list as a seperate article exists. Also a link is provided to the Manpads article. All nations entered in the Alpahbetical order.

--Chanakyathegreat 07:10, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

SAM is correct

Someone changed 'SAM' to 'STAM.' In most abbreviations, you do not include articles like 'to' or 'the.' Many do include them for various reasons, but in lower case (in this case it would be 'StAM') however anywhere you look, it will be 'SAM.' Iamrecognized 01:19, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Article Improvement Suggestions

First successes

Is it typical on weapons systems articles to mention the first successes of a weapons system specifically? This article does mention broadly the influences that changed the designs but it doesn't mention any specific examples such as the Shoot downs of Canberra's over China or U-2's over Russia & Cuba.--Senor Freebie (talk) 07:53, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

It is discussed in the S-75/SA-2 article. 66.87.7.68 (talk) 01:14, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Further Development

The article ends on the subject of Manpads. I think this makes it incomplete since the next major development really is the refinement of larger SAM's as well as the conversion of modern fire and forget AAM's to SAM work such as with the SLAMRAAM. It is probably worth doing a section on the Patriot / S-300 missiles as well as dedicated anti ballistic missiles in development (as well as a link to the relevant articles). The reason the Patriot & S-300 are so relevant is that they expand the potential targets to other incoming missiles and are 'perfected' in that they incompass a wide array of seeker types.

Antiaircraft Artillery

There is also a flawed statement that seems U.S. military centric; "By the 1980's, the only remaining widespread use was point-defense of airfields and ships, especially against cruise missiles." Sure, in the U.S. military there has not been an effective, mobile, armoured triple A for a long time, but the Germans, French, British, Chinese, Indians, and Russians all operate them still and continue to develop them. The next statement though; "By the 1990s, even these roles were being encroached on by new MANPAD and similar weapons." IS relevant since in many of those roles some of the vehicles originally designed as dedicated AAA have had SAM's added in upgrades or have been discarded in favour of combined systems.--Senor Freebie (talk) 08:03, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

That statement is not American-centric at all, and it just so happens to be true worldwide. Why the argumentativeness?98.67.166.209 (talk) 22:18, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Soviets had nuclear SAM's

It should be included into the article that the Soviet Union had SAM's with nuclear warheads to fight high-altitude American bombers. Source: http://www.cdi.org/issues/nukef&f/database/rusnukes.html#sa5bgammon 93.219.149.249 (talk) 07:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

List of missile shoot-down events

Newly minted anon user 69.62.190.170 has edit-warred a list of aircraft shot down over Vietnam into this article repeatedly, in spite of overwriting my other edits and pleas to stop until I was finished editing. So, keep list or remove? To me it's entirely off topic, and the newly expanded section on the missile battle over NV seems much more appropriate. Thoughts? Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

• Well it is Memorial Day this month. Over 300 US airmen were lost fighting those missiles; over 100 men, flying those B-52s alone! They ought to be remembered, not erased. In addition, I think most people will agree that a quality article should almost always be accompanied by a good chart or diagram, which this article had. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.207.248.20 (talk) 00:55, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

• A Surface to Air Missile (SAM) was built for one purpose, to destroy flying aircaft. It was not designed and built for Hollywood movies, advertising photographs, or educational purposes. Stating that the missile list chart is off topic would be akin to saying that the biography of a person should state, "he was born, then some photographs of him in the aging stages, then he died." When the biography of the person should say, "He was born, he shot down so many planes, he fought so many wars, or so many battles, etc. he married, had so many kids, so many divorces, marriages, his educational accomplishments, etc, ...then he died." Another words, the person had a mission in life, he accomplished them, then passed into history. The same holds true for the SAM; the SAM was designed, built, the deployed into battle. The SAM shot down so many aircraft, shot down so many DIFFERENT categories of aircraft, and did them at such and such ranges (maximum and mininum ranges).

The same example can be used with a race car. Was the race car built for show or for racing? The car was built for racing and the Indy 500 or the Grand Prix would be its ultimate test. The SAMs "Indy 500" and "Grand Prix" was the Vietnam War. What did the race car accomplish at Grand Prix or the Indy 500? No one knows, someone didn't consider it important. And yet that Indy 500 and Grand Prix was the soul of the racer! Its what it was intended and built to do. The soul of the SAM is aircraft destruction, and thats what it did in "its" Grand Prix/Indy 500 (Vietnam War), it destroyed airplanes. So how many did it destroy? What types of aircraft did it destroy? At what ranges did it destroy them? How dangerous were they in reality-verses THEORY? A chart (missile shoot down list) compliments an article, it is not intended to replace the article. The narrative and chart (missile hit list) go hand and hand, they work together as team; they enhance the article. Its not "us against them" its a team effort to make the Wikipedia a better and more informative encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.200.254.59 (talk) 22:04, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

• More to the point, missile content belongs in missile articles as much as train and ship content belongs in train and ship articles. SAM content is appropiate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.18.108.90 (talk) 01:01, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The USAF Still Operates The B-52 And SAMs Are Still A Threat: Learn From History, or Be Doomed to Repeat It!

The Vietnam War remains the only war in which B-52s were shot down by enemy action. B-52s and SAMs are both still in operation today, thru out the world. As long as they are, vital statistics (stats) will be important to the servicemen still operating those aircraft. This being the case, U.S. service members can always turn to the Wikipedia to help them survive in future conflicts. The "missile chart" benefits our American military personnel still flying those B-52s. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.164.18.102 (talk) 23:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I must admit that I was vaguely in support of theis list, albeit as a separate article, but ridiculous arguments like the above makes me question your reasoning. If some bugger is shooting hi tech weaponry at you then it seems unlikely that wiki will be the first resource *to spring to mind. Greglocock (talk) 09:58, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

• Re-formatted missile chart. I originally thought that these "stats" should go into the SA-2 wiki article, then I noticed that SA-7 shoulder fired surface to air missiles were also in this data. Therefore, it belongs in the SAM article and not specifically the SA-2 article. Didn't the TWA flight, recently mentioned on the news (a new movie) get downed with one of these SA-7 SAMs?

• A shoulder fired SAM was suspected, but what model is unknown. Just have to watch the film and find out; trusting Hollywood of course. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.1.11.41 (talk) 20:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

German anti-ship weapons

The section "Allied efforts" contains the statement, "...several allied ships were sunk by Henschel Hs 293 glide bombs and Fritz X antiship missiles." This is incorrect. The Henschel Hs 293 was in fact a manually guided missile with a rocket motor while the Fritz X was a heavy (3000 lb.) glide bomb with steering surfaces controlled by radio link but no motor whatsoever.--Death Bredon (talk) 20:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

WP:SOFIXIT Andy Dingley (talk) 21:50, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Main image?

It seems very odd that the leading image for this article is an apparently painted "artist's depiction." Broadly speaking wikipedia articles regarding modern military technology have a high-resolution photograph of the technology in question. See Patriot, Hawk, or the Strela. Seems very odd to me that the general topic page for a category takes a different approach to the image than any entry within that category.

Does anyone else agree? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ekp-araf (talk • contribs) 05:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Completely agree. There is no reason to use a painting when this is a real technology and pictures are available. TarkusAB^talk/contrib 22:33, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

More on the ground radar for SAMs

Should this article say more about the radars used to locate targets for the SAM, or would that all be in Air defence system which currently redirects to Anti-aircraft warfare ? - Rod57 (talk) 12:25, 10 August 2024 (UTC)