Magnetic guided ASM

[Matej]

A friend of mine wants to know the following thing:

At some old books, especially from Czechoslovakia, there is written that there exist some magnetic guided air-to-surface missiles. As example was stated GAM-63 Rascal. Now we know that Rascal has different kind of guidance, but the pure idea of magnetic targeting sounds interesting. Is it possible from physical point of view to create such a missile and will it be effective?

 

[Jemiba]

AFAIK the range of current magnetic targeting systems, in the form of the MAD
sensors of ASW aircraft, is still limited to around 500 meters and a lot of processing
still is necessary. Ok, if we'll give more modern equipment a better aquisition range
by a factor of 10 against larger targets at the surface, then it probably would still be
not enough, not even fo terminal homing, I think. And there probably always are a lot
of disturbances in the magnetic field, that the missile would have to consider in order
to prevent an attack against a wreck, an oilplatform or simply a rock containing some
ironore !