KS-1 Komet

The KS-1 Komet, known to NATO as the AS-1 Kennel, was an early Soviet short-range air-to-surface missile built by the Raduga design bureau and meant mainly for attacking surface ships. The KS in its designation stands for the Russian words for winged projectile. Development began in 1947 alongside a ground-launched cousin, the S-2 Sopka coastal defense missile, and both borrowed their aerodynamics from the MiG-15 fighter, so the missile looked like a scaled-down jet with the cockpit and undercarriage removed. A Klimov RD-500K turbojet, a reverse-engineered copy of the Rolls-Royce Derwent, drove it, an inertial system steered it in mid-flight and semi-active radar guided it at the end, and it carried a 600 kilogram high-explosive armour-piercing warhead. It is believed to have entered service in 1955 on the Tu-4 and later the Tu-16 Badger bomber, was exported to Egypt and Indonesia, and the last examples left Soviet service in 1969 as the AS-5 Kelt replaced them. The land-based Sopka variant is recorded as fired at Israeli ships during the Yom Kippur War.