ASALM

The Advanced Strategic Air-Launched Missile, known as ASALM, was a medium-range strategic missile that the United States Air Force sought in the late 1970s to replace the AGM-69 SRAM. It was to fly much faster and farther than the older missile, to resist hardened targets, and to serve in a second role against AWACS radar aircraft. Martin Marietta and McDonnell Douglas both submitted designs, and the Martin Marietta design, with a Marquardt integrated rocket-ramjet, was the one the Air Force favored. A solid rocket would boost the missile, and its empty casing would then become the combustion chamber of a ramjet. Seven propulsion test flights from October 1979 reached Mach 5.5 before the program was suspended in 1980, and the concept later led to the AQM-127 SLAT target drone.