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In 1963 China Lake began development of television-guided glide bomb, which became known as the Walleye/Mark 1.  Martin Marietta produced the weapon under contract to the Navy. It carried a 1,000-pound warhead and was guided to its target by a television sensor in the nose of the weapon. The sensor relayed a picture to the pilot, who acquired the target and “locked” the image, then released the weapon. The guidance system then continually matched the current TV image with the “locked” image, and corrected the course of the weapon. The TV guided weapon proved effective when used against targets that stood out against the background, such as a dark window in a light colored building.  Indeed, the first Walleye launched in combat in 1967 by a Navy A-4 Skyhawk against a barracks in Vietnam, flew directly into a window.  Of 68 Walleyes launched over a period of seven months, 65 hit their targets.

The l000-pound warhead proved too small for some harder targets such as bridges and power plants.  Accordingly, a larger version, Walleye II, was built with a 2,000-pound warhead and larger wings. The requirement for the pilot to lockon to the target before launch proved to be a problem in a heavily defended target situation, so a data-link was built that would relay the television image from the weapon to the pilot after launch, and it allowed the missile to be launched without acquiring the target first.  Through the data link, the pilot could then achieve lockon while the weapon was in flight.  This data link was called the Extended Range Data Link, or ERDL.  The ERDL was backfitted onto both versions of the Walleye. The missile could even be controlled from another aircraft than the launching aircraft.

Production of the ERDL Walleyes ended in 1976, but in the late 1970s some 1400 Walleye Is and 2400 Walleye Is were converted to ERDL versions, and in the 1980s the data link equipment was upgraded. Gradual phase-out of the Walleye began in the late 1980s, but in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, it was again used in combat.  After the war ended, the Navy phased out the A-7E Corsair, the main launch platform for Walleye, and the missile was subsequently removed from active service in the mid-1990s. A total of about 5,000 Walleye glide bombs of all types were built by Martin Marietta and by subcontractor Hughes.