M651 missile launcher

The M651 missile launcher is a heavy aerial-mounted weapon system employed by the United Nations Space Command. They are classed as a Class-2 Guided Munition Launch System in UNSC inventories (compared to Class-1 GMLS' such as the M302 rocket pod). The weapon consists of five individual autoloading launch tubes, capable of firing lock on-capable M5607 ASGM-4 missiles. Two such weapons are ventrally mounted on the underside skiffs of the standard AV-14 Hornet models.

Production notes
In Halo: The Essential Visual Guide, the Hornet's missile launcher is erroneously identified as being on the nose of the aircraft. The Class-2 GMLS caption points at the vehicle's nose-mounted targeting, sensor and camera array.

In Halo 3, the missiles fired by the M651 launchers on the Hornet reuse the model of the M5607 ASGM-4 missile fired from the LAU-65D/SGM-151 missile pod weapon. Both sets of missiles in-game demonstrate broadly similar gameplay properties for tracking and explosive radius and damage, indicating that the two are intended to be one and the same in Halo canon. In Halo 2: Anniversary multiplayer, the Hornet reuses the model for the M19 missile - a surface-to-surface missile fired by the M41 SPNKr rocket launchers. Given that the M19 is much larger and explicitly a surface-to-surface missile, this article assumes the M5607 ASGM-4 to be the correct missile fired by the M651.

Appearances

 * Halo: Uprising
 * Halo 3
 * Halo 3: ODST
 * Halo Legends
 * Homecoming
 * Origins
 * Halo 4
 * Halo 2: Anniversary