The U.S. military's AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missile, the weapon that's killed more people than any other of its type in the war on terror, is going to be replaced and its replacement has again destroyed another moving target

Long synonymous as the weapon of choice for precision killings of radical Islamists in the Middle East, Hellfire is the primary assassination weapon of U.S. aerial drones such as the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper.

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Its successor, the Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM), was launched by an AH-64D Apache pilot during a test on Dec. 7, 2016 and destroyed its target, a small boat, from a distance of four kilometers guided by both laser and radar sensors.

The test was the tenth successful JAGM flight test. It demonstrated JAGM's maturity and capability against different kinds of targets in a variety of environments, said the U.S. Army.

In May 2016, JAGM was fired for the first time from an unmanned aerial vehicle and destroyed its target, a truck speeding at 32 km/h. It was the seventh test for the missile.

JAGM is a U.S. joint military program to develop an air-to-surface missile that will replace the Hellfire; the air-launched BGM-71 TOW and the AGM-65 Maverick missile. The U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps plan to buy thousands of JAGMs, which can be launched from helicopters, manned fixed-wing planes and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Among the aircraft that will deploy JAGM are the Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter; the Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk maritime helicopter; the Bell AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter and the General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle a medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aircraft system.

The $66 million JAGM missile engineering and manufacturing development contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin in 2015. JAGM should reach initial operational capability in 2018.

JAGM weighs 49 kilograms and has a length of 180 centimeters, dimensions almost similar to that of the Hellfire. The maximum range of both missiles is eight kilometers.

Tagsoint Air-to-Ground Missile, JAGM, AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missile, Lockheed Martin