For a little foreign exchange, the Russian company sold the most advanced supersonic anti-ship missile that year.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia fell into economic difficulties. Due to insufficient military expenditures, the country’s defense industry actively explored the international market, which led to the chaos of competition among Russian state-owned enterprises. As long as they gave foreign exchange any high-tech products, they could sell it. The U.S. Navy saw an excellent opportunity to acquire Soviet weapons.

One of them is the Kh-31 supersonic air-to-surface missile developed by the Kaliningrad "Star Arrow" Machinery Manufacturing Design Bureau in the late 1970s. The bomb was originally developed as a high-speed anti-radiation missile, capable of detecting and destroying the radars of the latest Western air defense systems (such as the U.S. Army’s Patriot surface-to-air missile system) and the U.S. Navy’s "Aegis" phased array radar. system.

Kh-31 received the NATO designation AS-17 "Krypton" after its first test fire in 1982. The bomb entered service with the Soviet Air Force and Naval Aviation in 1988, and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. At that time, its Kh-31A anti-ship model also made its first public appearance.

Kh-31's high performance puts a lot of pressure on the US Navy. The missile uses a rocket-ramjet propulsion system to achieve sustained supersonic flight. After the missile is launched, it is accelerated to the optimum operating speed of the ramjet under the propulsion of the primary solid fuel rocket motor, and then the ramjet is started. The Kh-31P with high-altitude flight profile can reach a maximum speed of Mach 3.5, and the Kh-31A with sea-skimming flying can also reach Mach 2.5, which is extremely difficult to defend.

Therefore, the U.S. Navy attaches great importance to Kh-31, and launched the Supersonic Low Altitude Target (SLAT) project while the bomb was still being developed, aiming to develop a type that can be used for testing. The low-altitude supersonic target of the Aegis combat system.

In 1984, Martin Marietta won the SLAT contract and began to develop the YAQM-127A target. However, due to the technical failure of the rocket-ramjet propulsion system, the projectile was successfully launched only once in the six test launches between November 1987 and January 1989. The final launch was in November 1990 and May 1991. Both test launches also failed, and the project was forcibly cancelled by the US Congress.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union gave the US Navy an opportunity to directly obtain Kh-31. In 1995, it awarded McDonnell Douglas a contract to directly evaluate the performance of Kh-31. McDonnell Douglas brandished US dollars and easily bought a batch of Kh-31 missile bodies from the Star Arrow Design Bureau with the warhead and guidance system removed. McDonnell Douglas converted them into MA-31 target bombs, equipped with universal long-range autopilots. (URAP) guidance system, tracking beacon, telemetry equipment, and air self-destruction system.

The modified MA-31 is basically the same as the Russian Kh-31 in performance, and can perform anti-ship and anti-radiation flight profiles like the original cargo. The Americans discovered the bomb during the test. It can perform violent maneuvers with an overload of up to 15 g in sea skimming flight!

In the end, McDonnell Douglas and its successor Boeing refitted a total of 18 MA-31 target bombs. Between 1996 and 2003, F-4 fighter jets carried out 13 air-launched tests and successfully 10 times. Let the U.S. Navy know the tactical performance of Kh-31 upright. After fully grasping Kh-31, the US Navy also commissioned Orbital Sciences to develop a copy of Kh-31-the GQM-163 "Coyote" target bomb.

Boeing even proposed an improved MA-31PG in 2004. The bomb will be equipped with a GPS navigation kit for joint direct attack ammunition, which can hit fixed targets in any weather conditions. Transformed into a practical air-to-surface missile. However, this plan was shattered with President Putin's rise to power. Russia implemented new arms export restrictions after realizing the evil consequences of exchanging foreign exchange for sensitive technology and decided not to export Kh-31.