air forces to establish immediate air supremacy prior to possible full-scale conflict. Wild Weasel tactics and techniques were later adapted by other nations in subsequent conflicts, as well as being integrated into the suppression of enemy air defenses, a plan used by U.S.

'The first Wild Weasel success came soon after the first Wild Weasel mission 20 December 1965 when Captains Al Lamb and Jack Donovan took out a site during a Rolling Thunder strike on the railyard at Yen Bai, some 75 mi (120 km) northwest of Hanoi.'

The program was headed by General Kenneth Dempster. The Wild Weasel concept was developed by the USAF in 1965 during the Vietnam War after the introduction of Soviet SAMs and their downing of American strike aircraft participating in Operation Rolling Thunder in the skies over North Vietnam. The task of a Wild Weasel aircraft is to bait enemy anti-aircraft defenses into targeting it with their radars, whereupon the radar waves are traced back to their source, allowing the Weasel or its teammates to precisely target it for destruction. Wild Weasel is a code name given by the United States Air Force (USAF) to an aircraft of any type equipped with anti-radiation missiles and tasked with the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD): destroying the radar and surface-to-air missile (SAM) installations of enemy air defense systems. The letters at the bottom stand for 'You gotta be shitting me.' Joe).Īn F-4G with WW payload near to far: AGM-88 HARM, AGM-65 Maverick, ALQ-119 ECM pod, AGM-78 Standard ARM and AGM-45 Shrike, circa 1981. This article is about an air combat mission.

Us navy in vietnam war wiki