Aircraft missile maintenance. Support engineer maintaining a wing-mounted aircraft missile. This is a smart missile, mounted on the wing of a Harrier

---

Aircraft missile maintenance. Support engineer maintaining a wing-mounted aircraft missile. This is a smart missile, mounted on the wing of a Harrier II jump jet. Missiles such as these use laser targeting, which is dependent on the use of rare earth elements such as yttrium. Other rare earth elements used in missiles include neodymium and samarium. Photographed in August 2005, on the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi (C551).

---

Size: 5125px × 3466px
Photo credit: © MASSIMO BREGA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 2005, 21st, adult, aeroplane, aircraft, airplane, application, august, bomb, c551, carrier, caucasian, century, earth, element, elements, engineer, engineering, europe, european, fixing, garibald, giuseppe, guided, harrier, human, ii, inspecting, italian, italy, jet, jump, laser, lgb, maintaining, maintenance, male, man, military, missile, neodymium, outdoors, people, person, plane, rare, repairing, samarium, ship, soldier, support, system, targeting, technological, technology, warfare, weapon, weapons, white, wing, wing-mounted, worker, yttrium