air-to-surface missile

1 6.7

A weapon that a plane fires to hit a target on the ground

noun
/ɛr tə ˈsɜrfɪs ˈmɪsəl/

Specialized

: misil aire-superficie

During the exercise, the pilots practiced launching air-to-surface missiles at designated targets on land.

Examples

Moain Sadeq, who founded Gaza's Department of Antiquities in 1994, confirms that a wall there dating from the Roman period was damaged in January when an Israeli air-to-surface missile slammed into a nearby target.

Academic text (2009)
Clear to launch air-to-surface missiles.

Fiction book (1991)
The SRAM-II and the tactical SRAM-T air-to-surface missiles were canceled.

Academic text (1991)
The military used several air-to-surface missiles to target enemy installations during the operation.
Clearance was given to deploy air-to-surface missiles against the enemy's ground forces.

Synonyms

air-to-ground missile

vsair-to-surface missile

Specialized

1 5.8

A weapon that a plane fires to hit targets on the ground

is the same meaning but uses a different term for the same weapon

Surface Forms

air-to-surface missile singular

air-to-surface missiles plural

Morphology

air-to-surface + missile

The compound is directly compositional: 'air-to-surface' indicates direction/source-to-target (from the air to the surface) and 'missile' is a weapon, so the meaning 'a missile launched from an aircraft to strike a ground target' can be derived from the parts. The hyphenated X-to-Y pattern is regular and cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would understand it.

Etymology

Air-to-surface missile is a literal compound name: a missile sent from the air to the surface, meaning the ground or sea. So the name explains the meaning: 'a weapon launched from an aircraft to hit a target on the ground'.