The Nike Hercules, initially designated SAM-A-25 and later MIM-14, was a surface-to-air missile (SAM) used by U.S. and NATO armed forces for medium- and high-altitude long-range air defense.

Hercules was originally developed as a simple upgrade to the earlier MIM-3 Nike Ajax, allowing it to carry a nuclear warhead in order to defeat entire formations of high-altitude supersonic targets.

Hercules was officially referred to as "transportable", but moving a battery was a significant operation and required considerable construction at the firing sites.

Over its lifetime, significant effort was put into the development of solid state replacements for the vacuum tube-based electronics inherited from the early-1950s Ajax, and a variety of mobile options.

Similar systems quickly emerged from other nations, including the S-75 Dvina (SA-2) from the USSR,[8][citation not found] and the English Electric Thunderbird in the UK.

Given the Nike warhead's relatively small lethal radius, if the missile flew into the middle of the formation and exploded, it would be highly unlikely to destroy any of the aircraft.

Solid fuel rockets can remain stored for years and are generally very difficult to ignite without an extended period of applied flame.

Redstone Arsenal then presented the T48E3 which was somewhat larger and longer to reach reasonable performance, but only at the cost of having to modify all of the Ajax launcher rails.

[18] This was answered most forcibly not by the Army, but the Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson, who wrote in Newsweek that "one hard solid fact remerges above them all: no matter what the Nike is or isn't, it's the only land-based operational anti-aircraft missile that the U.S.

[7]: 20-30,37 This did not do much to stop the squabbling, nor did it solve the problems that led to the issues in the first place – the fight over Hercules and BOMARC and related anti-missile developments.

This prompted ARAACOM commander Charles E. Hart to petition the Secretary of Defense to order the Air Force to stop the well organized campaign against Hercules.

In February, Air Force Chief of Staff Thomas D. White shocked everyone when he requested that BOMARC deployments be reduced to eight US and two Canadian sites, essentially killing the program.

[10]: 63 In the aftermath of the Hercules/BOMARC debates, retired Army Brigadier General Thomas R. Phillips wrote an article for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that BOMARC and SAGE had been the "most costly waste of funds in the history of the Defense Department.

A variety of problems, including one found in the W-7 warhead, caused delays in the testing programs, so a single launch of the T45-equipped Hercules was also added to the AMMO project.

[22] The AMMO shot took place on 1 July 1958, successfully intercepting a simulated 650-knot (750 mph; 1,200 km/h) target flying at an altitude of 100,000 feet (30,000 m) and a slant range of 79 miles (69 nmi; 127 km).

Nuclear-armed Nike Hercules missiles were deployed in the United States, Greece, Italy, Korea and Turkey, and with Belgian, Dutch, and U.S. forces in West Germany.

[2]: 287 [23] Conventionally armed Nike Hercules missiles also served in the United States, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Japan, Norway, and Taiwan.

Three key elements were identified; the need to attack formations without nuclear warheads, operations against low-altitude targets, and better traffic-handling capabilities to handle larger raids.

[26] In early 1956, Bell began studies of the Improved Nike Hercules (INH) concept by considering the predicted threat for the 1960-65 period.

To address this whole range of issues, Bell proposed a series of changes:[27] The addition of the TRR solved a problem with early pulse radar units.

By making the signal wide-frequency, the jammer has to likewise broadcast across a similar bandwidth, limiting the energy in any one frequency and allowing the operator to tune the receiver to find an unjammed band.

HIPAR would detect targets separately and "hand off" to the LOPAR and TTR so those systems could remain largely unchanged and able to launch either Hercules or Ajax.

[30] FABMDS would have performance against any credible "theatre" ranged missile or rocket system, as well as offer anti-aircraft capabilities, the ability to attack four targets at once, and be relatively mobile.

Site Summit (B Battery) still sits above Eagle River, its IFC buildings and clamshell towers easily visible when driving towards Anchorage.

NATO units from West Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Greece and Turkey continued to use the Hercules for high-altitude air defense until the late 1980s.

Each of these was a steel tube, and held together in this fashion they presented a considerable range safety issue when they fell back to the ground after launch.

The boosters were equipped with four large swept-wing fins at the extreme rear, behind the rocket exhaust, using a diamond cross-section suitable for supersonic lift.

Information from the MTR and TTR continued to be fed to the computer for updating the intercept point based on any actual changes in either the missile or the target location, speed or direction.

For these missions the computer used the MTR to guide the missile to a point above the target, then commanded it to dive vertically while measuring any changes in trajectory as it fell.

The missile would eventually pass out of line-of-sight with the MTR, so final arming information was provided during the dive, and the warhead was triggered by a barometric fuse.