OVERSWEEPThe Interactive Flight Reference

RBS 15 anti-ship missile

A grey missile with swept wings on a stand in a museum store
An RBS 15 at the Swedish Naval Museum.Photo: Marinmuseum (The Swedish Naval Museum). CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (accessed 2026-10-27).

Drafted — not technically validated

Record revision 1 · The RB 04's turbojet successor, fired from the Viggen, the Gripen, ships and coastal trucks.

Real-world weapon as described in public sources. Weights and dimensions change with the fins, fuzes and variant fitted; the data plate names the variants its figures describe, and differences are noted beside the number they affect. The record describes the weapon; it is not a guide to employing it.

RBS 15 anti-ship missile · RBS 15

Type
Long-range, fire-and-forget anti-ship missile, launched from aircraft, ships and coastal trucks [1]
Origin
Sweden
In service
1985 (Mk I) [1]
Weight
568 kg (1,252 lb) in flight, Mk I [1]
Dimensions
Length 4.35 m (14.3 ft); diameter 500 mm (20 in); wingspan 1.4 m (4.6 ft) [1]
Warhead or payload
200 kg (441 lb) high explosive, blast and pre-fragmented [1]
Guidance
Fire and forget; the Mk II upgraded mid-course and terminal guidance [1]
Fuzing
Not given in the cited source
Delivery
Air-launched version RBS 15F; subsonic at Mach 0.9 [1]
Range
70 km (38 NM) Mk I; more than 300 km on the Mk IV [1]
Carried by
  • RBS 15F: Swedish AJS 37 and AJ 37 ViggenAJS 37 Viggen AircraftA Swedish canard-delta attack aircraft built to fly from road bases, with a thrust reverser and anti-ship missiles., JAS 39 Gripen [1]
  • Swedish and Finnish ships and coastal batteries [1]
Variants
  • RBS 15F: air-launched [1]
  • Mk II, Mk III and Mk IV: longer range; the Mk III and IV can also attack land targets [1]

From the RB 04

The RBS 15 grew out of a 1978 Saab proposal called “RB 04 Turbo”: a development of the air force’s RB 04ERB 04 anti-ship missile OrdnanceSweden's sea-skimming anti-ship missile for the Lansen and Viggen. with a turbofan engine and new wings, keeping its front end and warhead. [1] Sweden chose this home-grown design over the HarpoonAGM-84 Harpoon and SLAM OrdnanceThe sea-skimming anti-ship missile and its SLAM land-attack derivative, first fired in combat in 1991. in 1979. It went to sea on fast attack craft from 1985, and the Swedish Air Force received its missiles a couple of years later. [1]

In the air

The air-launched RBS 15F has been fired only from Swedish fighters: the AJS 37 and AJ 37 ViggenAJS 37 Viggen AircraftA Swedish canard-delta attack aircraft built to fly from road bases, with a thrust reverser and anti-ship missiles. and the JAS 39 Gripen. [1] It is a subsonicSubsonic GlossaryFlight: The regime of flight below about Mach 0.75, in which the airflow on all parts of the aircraft is most likely subsonic., fire-and-forget missile, and later versions have reached much longer ranges and gained the ability to attack land targets. [1]

Sources

  1. RBS 15. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBS_15 (accessed 2026-10-27).

Wikipedia articles are secondary sources and can change; they are cited with the date they were read. NAVEDTRA training manuals and budget justification exhibits are official US publications, but each describes the weapons in service when it was written.