Zuni Rockets

The Zuni 5-inch folding-fin aircraft rocket (FFAR) was developed to replace the high-velocity aircraft rocket (HVAR) of World War 2 vintage. As part of its design, it’s modular and capable of using different warheads as well as different fuzes.

The Zuni rockets are carried in LAU-10 pods, each carrying 4 rockets. The pods can fire in either salvo mode or ripple mode, salvo launching one rocket and ripple all.

The F-14 Tomcat can carry LAU-10 rocket pods on stations 1B, 3, 6, and 8B using TERs, each TER holding up to two pods except one of either 3 or 6 which must only carry one as not to clash with a pod on the adjacent station. The TERs are used to gain separation from the station for safe rocket firing, and the reason for not being able to use three pods on the TERs is that on the glove pylons, the inner TER station would conflict with the main landing gear and on stations 3 and 6 with the fuselage.

The Zuni rockets are set up for launch by the RIO on the armament panel as with bombs, the delivery mode (DLVY MODE) switches being used to configure how many pods to activate at a time.