With the availability of the more powerful Rolls-Royce Avon 200 series engines in the early 1950s, the Hawker company began developing a new modification of their Hunter jet fighter, which would eventually result in the creation of the Hunter F.6 - one of the last dedicated fighter modifications of this aircraft.

The new Hunter featured, apart from a more powerful engine, a number of other tweaks and changes, most notably, a redesigned wing which contributed to the aircraft’s overall stability during transonic flight. The first prototype of the F.6 flew in January 1954, with serial production commencing in 1956. Overall, 383 aircraft of the type entered service with the RAF before being decommissioned in the early 1980s.

In the late 1970s, the Hunter F.6 was used as a testbed for a new type of air-to-air missile developed by Hawker Siddeley since the late ‘60s. The SRAAM, or Short Range Air-to-Air Missile, was a weapon system developed as an alternative to the American Sidewinder and the British Firestreak missiles.

As the name suggests, the SRAAM was designed for shorter range deployments during dogfights, in situations where pilots would find it difficult to achieve a reliable lock-on with existing missiles. As such, the SRAAM possessed extremely good agility and didn’t cost as much to produce, but was severely limited in range. Despite this however, the weapon didn’t see active use, but was instead further developed into a more advanced version which eventually did get adopted and is still in use today.