Improvements in radar-guided antiaircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles in the 1950s significantly increased the threat of strike aircraft being shot down while bearing bombs and rockets to targets. Enemy air defense systems depended on their radar to guide their missiles or projectiles to the aircraft. In response, China Lake’s scientists, in partnership with Texas Instruments and Sperry Rand-Univac began work in 1958 on the first “antiradar” or “antiradiation” missile designed to counter this threat by detecting and homing in on the threat radar and destroying or suppressing it. The result was the AGM-45 Shrike missile. Like many China Lake products, the Shrike team borrowed heavily from previous technology, in this case they used the Sparrow air-to-air missile’s airframe. What was new was the antiradiation homing technology. The Shrike was first introduced in combat in Vietnam in 1966, eventually being deployed on a variety of U.S. and foreign aircraft. The operator boresighted the Shrike on a radar emitter, and launched after the seeker reported a “lock” on the radar’s signal. The missile then rode down the radar beam to the emitter. If the radar kept emitting, Shrike would destroy it, or, if it shut down to keep from getting hit by the Shrike, the enemy air defense systems could no longer guide their weapons, effectively suppressing them while the strike aircraft passed out of range.

The Shrike became the standard antiradiation missile for the Air Force and Navy and was also used effectively by the Israelis in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and by the British in the Falklands conflict in 1982. In all, over 18,500 Shrikes were produced. An improved motor was introduced in the 1970s increasing the missile’s range from 10 miles to 25 miles. Shrike’s last combat use was in the 1991 Gulf War, and they were phased out in 1992.

Operational drawbacks of the Shrike included a seeker that was tuned to a specific enemy radar frequency. A change in frequency or a new system operating on a different frequency rendered the weapon ineffective. As a result a new seeker had to be developed for each new change in the threat. Many subvariants were developed and mission planners had to know in advance which variant to mount on the aircraft. Additionally, the seeker was not gimbaled and had a fixed and rather limited field-of-view, so that the missile had to be aligned almost perfectly with the radar.  These operational problems were addressed in a much more versatile follow-on antiradiation missile called HARM, which is still in use today.