Hawk guts
How about this great view of the Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk X-band CW mono-pulse semi-active radar seeker guidance system, taken a few years ago from a display at the excellent Alabama Veterans Museum in rural Athens. The museum’s nearby location to Redstone Arsenal obviously has some benefits.
What could go wrong?
Hard to believe, but Hawk, developed in the 1950s and initially fielded in 1960, remained in U.S. Army service (as Improved Hawk) until 1997 when the final Ohio ARNG battalion equipped with it was deactivated, while the Marines retired them in favor of Avenger in 1999.
In all of that nearly 40-year run, no U.S. manned Hawk battery engaged an enemy aircraft in combat (at least in acknowledged incidents.)
However, American-supplied Hawks made kills with the Israelis (the first combat use for the system occurred in 1967 when the IDF successfully fired the missiles during the Six Day War with Egypt), the Iranians, and the Kuwaitis, with the latter reportedly downing an impressive 22 Iraqi aircraft and one combat helicopter during the blitzkrieg invasion of that country on 2 August 1990.
And it seems that the old and “obsolete” Hawk is still hard at work, with launchers and missiles being sent to Ukraine in the past couple of years to field against its traditional Cold War foe: red-starred MiGs and Sukohi fast movers.