Sept 13, 1985: Maj. Doug Pearson in an F-15 pulled a wild zoom climb and became the first and only pilot ever to shoot down a satellite from an aircraft.... 345 miles up, pure kinetic kill.
41 years later, no other jet or pilot on Earth has repeated it.
We proved fighters could reach space… then stopped.
@Fahadnbiem via X
The chosen weapon to counter this threat was the Vought ASM-135A Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missile. The ASM-135A featured several interesting characteristics such as the first stage of the AGM-69 SRAM-A nuclear air-to-surface missile and the lack of any warhead, meaning that it had to physically hit the target to destroy it. This result could be achieved thanks to a small IR-guided “homing kinetic kill vehicle” which had to guide the ASAT on the heat source of the oncoming satellite.