AGM-12 Bullpup

The AGM-12 Bullpup is a short-range air-to-ground missile developed by Martin Marietta for the US Navy, and it is among the earliest precision-guided air-to-ground weapons and the first to be mass produced. Development began in 1953, when Korean War experience showed how poorly conventional bombing handled point targets such as bridges. The missile was officially put into service on 25 April 1959 on A-4 Skyhawks aboard the carrier USS Lexington, and it later flew from aircraft including the A-6 Intruder, F-100 Super Sabre, F-105 Thunderchief, F-4 Phantom II and P-3 Orion in Navy, Air Force and NATO service. The pilot steered it by a small joystick, following two flares on its tail, which meant the aircraft had to keep flying toward the target, and its accuracy was on the order of 10 metres. Production versions were mostly built by Maxson Electronics. In the 1960s fully automatic weapons such as the AGM-62 Walleye and AGM-65 Maverick increasingly replaced it.