AS.34 Kormoran

Description

The AS.34 Kormoran is a German-designed and -produced anti-ship missile, which was primarily designed to target and destroy enemy ships and other water-borne targets, though it also comes with limited ground-attack capability. It was designed to be carried by the F-104G Starfighter and Tornado IDS Marineflieger aircraft, though currently only the Marineflieger has access to the missile in-game.

The missile is designed as a fire-and-forget missile, which relies on an inertial navigation system (INS) in the initial phase directly after launch and active radar-homing (ARH) in the terminal phase. This means that in a real-world scenario, the pilot selects an acquired target on radar or visually points the missile at the intended target, after which the missile is launched and then autonomously guides itself onto the target.

The missile has a complex 165 kg semi-armor piercing high-explosive warhead with a main charge and 16 additional shaped charges. The missile is designed to penetrate several bulkheads of a ship just above the waterline and then explode deep inside the ship for maximum damage in all directions. At the time of writing only the explosive force of the 56kg main charge is modeled in the game.

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• ◄Tornado IDS MFG

General info

Missile characteristics
Mass	600 kg
Guidance	ARH+IOG
Signal	Pulse
Lock range	50 km
Launch range	32 km
Maximum speed	0.9 M
Missile guidance time	101.0 secs
Explosive type	Composition B
Explosive mass	56 kg
TNT equivalent	73.36 kg
Warhead type	SAP-HE
Armor penetration	75mm

Effective damage

While possessing armor-piercing capabilities the missile truly does its damage through pure high explosive power. With 73.36 kg of TNTeq explosive force, the missile is more than capable of taking out lightly armored vehicles even with a hit to the ground close to the vehicle, as well as taking out more well-armored vehicles with a direct hit.

Comparison with analogues

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Usage in battles

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Pros and cons

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History

The AS.34 Kormoran was the first major post-war missile project in West Germany. It was designed to meet the needs of the West German navy for a large anti-ship missile for use in coastal waters. Development began in 1962 and was handed over to West German aerospace manufacturer Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm (MBB) in 1967. It wouldn't be until 1973 before the West German government decided to actually procure the missile and, after completing its trials in 1974, it finally entered into service with the West German Navy in 1977.

The missile was originally based on a design by French Nord-Aviation, the makers of the AS-20 Nord, AS-30 Nord and AS-30L Nord missiles , using the inertial guidance system from their cancelled AS.33 missile project.

Examine the history of the creation and combat usage of the weapon in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too long, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the weapon and adding a block "/History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Weapon-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref></ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article with <references />.

Media

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See also

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External links

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