When the United States first started its bombing campaign in North Vietnam, it discovered that its ability to combat the sophisticated air defense system was very limited and early on it became apparent that the AGM-45 Shrike anti-radiation missile had a number of serious limitations, particularly in its range, small warhead and limited seeker. In effort to overcome some of these limitations, the Navy worked with General Dynamics to develop an air-launched version of the Navy’s RIM-66 Standard surface-to-air missile. By using an existing missile platform, development proceeded fairly quickly and the result was the AGM-78 Standard ARM (anti-radiation missile). Early versions of the AGM-78 were actually outfitted with the same seeker head as the Shrike, but as the Standard ARM had a much larger warhead, a larger engine and a gimbaled seeker head, it was more flexible and effective than the Shrike. Continued development of the missile led to improvements in the seeker and the inclusion of a memory circuit gave the missile the ability to home on a target even after the emitter shut down, a common countermeasure to the early versions of both the Standard ARM and the Shrike. The Standard ARM was used by the Air Force’s F-105F/G Wild Weasels and the Navy’s A-6B/E Iron Hand aircraft. Later variants of the AGM-78 were used by the F-4G Wild Weasel until both the Shrike and the Standard ARM were replaced by the AGM-88 HARM.

The kit consists of two Standard ARM missiles, each as a single casting and two photo-etch end plates for the missiles. As with Eduard’s other Brassin weapons sets, the casting are extremely well done and look great painted up. Painting the AGM-78 is very simple as it appears all of the missile were painted white overall, the only exception being the seeker head. Eduard’s instructions state that the seeker head can either be white or red, but many photographs show the missile with a black seeker head. As I plan to mount my on a A-6B conversion I have in the works, my reference photos show white seeker heads, so mine are white.

Another outstanding feature of the set is the decal set. There are 5 different decals on each missile and some of them are used in several locations on each missile. One concern I had before I decaled was how the decals for the detectors would conform to the raised detail of the detectors on the missiles. I shouldn’t have bothered, as the decals snuggled right down over the raised details using MicroSet and MicroSol without a wrinkle.

This is another outstanding set from Eduard and a must for anyone modeling a F-105F/G Wild Weasel or A-6 Iron Hand aircraft. Heartily recommended.

Thank you to Eduard for the review sample and to IPMS-USA for letting me review it.