Martel (missile)

The AS 37 Martel was an Anglo-French air-launched missile built around a common airframe that could carry either of two guidance packages. The name is a retronym for Missile Anti-Radar and Television, and it also means hammer. The AS 37 version carried a passive radar homing head and was meant to home on hostile radar emissions, while the AJ.168 version used television guidance and was operated only by the British. The program came out of a cooperation between Hawker Siddeley in Britain and Matra in France that began in 1964 under a memorandum of understanding signed that October. The anti-radar missile entered service in 1969, and it was carried by aircraft that included the Jaguar, Buccaneer, Harrier, Mirage III, Atlantic and Nimrod. It served in the French air force and navy and in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, and the Buccaneer used it in the cold war anti-shipping role. France declined to order the television version when production began, and a later French derivative, the Armat, was introduced in 1984.