The Royal Australian Air Force will soon declare the Rafael AGM-142 Raptor air-ground missile operational. Two launch tests in July using a General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark were successful, and two more tests are scheduled in October. Clearing the test phase allows the Israeli missile to become the main air-ground system of the upgraded fighters.
Rafael supplied the missiles in 2000, but wing fatigue problems on the F-111 delayed aircraft integration. Some of the missiles delivered to the RAAF are armed with blast-fragmentation warheads and others with penetration warheads. The Raptor is the advanced version of the AGM-142 Popeye, the result of a product enhancement programme (PEP). The missiles are fitted with an 8-12µ thermal-imaging seeker that has selectable wide and narrow field of view (FOV) modes. Wide FOV is used to acquire the target and narrow FOV for the terminal phase.
Source: Flight International