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- Ground-attack aircraft like the A-10 are usually close enough to see, but air-superiority fighters usually get radar locks far beyond visual distances, and then can launch a missile. Sidewinders only have a 10-mile range, but the Phoenix missiles have a 100-mile range. Sidewinders are built small and light to be more maneuverable, where the Phoenix is slower and heavier.
…One thing to consider though is that many fighter aircraft now can all fly 1000+ miles per hour, so 100 miles isn’t real far if you can cover that distance in six minutes. Or two planes coming towards each other, closing it in three minutes.
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------> I find it rather interesting that the first use of an unmanned, armed aircraft (Predator) was by CIA pilots, and not by AF. Does anyone know if there was some particular reason for this?
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- Ground-attack aircraft like the A-10 are usually close enough to see, but air-superiority fighters usually get radar locks far beyond visual distances, and then can launch a missile. Sidewinders only have a 10-mile range, but the Phoenix missiles have a 100-mile range. Sidewinders are built small and light to be more maneuverable, where the Phoenix is slower and heavier.
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It was simply because those Predators were assigned to the CIA, not to the USAF.
Predators were originally designed as intelligence/recon platforms. It wasn’t until later that an attack capability was added.
Argh! The AIM-54 got a lot of undeserved good press IMHO.
That 100 miles is a nice staticic but there is a big difference between being able to shoot a missle 100 miles at a drone and being able to hit a fighter at 100 miles. The Phoenix was designed to gain altitude quickly during its motor burn so it had altitude left for an arcing, ballistic flight. A lot of the missle’s velocity is gone after such a long flight and any manevering to keep up with an erratic target bleeds off more kinetic energy. The farther the missle has to go the easier it is to evade it. Think about it. If you have fire control rader you can damn sure track a missle coming at you. If one’s been flying toward you for 100 miles are you going to keep flying in a straight line? The F-14’s role was fleet air defense and the Phoenix was considered ideal for use against cruise missles which were not anticipated to be able to evade.
AFAIK there has only been one time that six AIM-54s were fired from an F-14 and that was done in the testing stage. In carrier operations there wasn’t even a provision to load six on a single airplane because there was no lift that could mount them on the wing stations that was stable enough to be used at sea. I never actually saw more than two mounted becuse mounting them on the aft belly stations caused balance problems. For normal CAP operations I rarely saw more than one ever loaded. I am not aware of the AIM-54 ever being used in combat. If anyone has an example I’d love to hear it.
Well in defence of the 54 , it was never really designed to take out fighters , but bombers and those big hulking russian cruise missiles. I am told by various people on usenet , that the phoenix had an extreme range of 110 miles , but an operational range of 60 miles.
Most A/C do not carry a radar that large enough to even see it coming and from that angle. Even if the RWR starts screaming incoming , the pilot may become confused as to seeing nothing on radar indicating a launch A/C.
I think Gulf war one , against a Foxbat , but if its true , its not exactly well documented , specially for a million dollar missile.
Declan
[QUOTE=DougC ------> I find it rather interesting that the first use of an unmanned, armed aircraft (Predator) was by CIA pilots, and not by AF. Does anyone know if there was some particular reason for this?
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Same reason the U2 and the SR-71 were both CIA developments , and operators
The lead operators in Afganistan , were the CIA and the special forces, it stands to reason that they would get the first operational upgrade to the predator.
Declan
That’s interesting Declan, I’ll research that possible AIM-54 shot. As for the AIM-54’s ability that was kind of my point, that it was never really an ACM weapon so really didn’t figure into the discussion on guns vs more appropriate missles such as sidewinders. I don’t think the AIM-54 was a bad weapon but it’s reputation may have been out of line compared to others that were proven in combat.
FWIW in the six years I was in the Navy I was only involved in one AIM-54 shoot. We spent days in bad weather maintaining weapons systems for the shoot that was constantly postponed. When it came time to actually shoot the &$#@* AWG-9 took a crap so they had to fire a million dollar missle boresight. Fortunately they can do this because the AIM-54 has a fully active radar within <mumble, mumble> miles. The drone was able to evade the target but such a high G turn would not have been possible with a human pilot so it counted as a hit.
Actually the cost of the Phoenix was down to half a mil by the time they had been deployed a while.
Thank god we never had to prove it , as god and raytheon intended
LOL murphy strikes again
And I think the active or terminal homing , is an open secret by now , somewhere in the _ _ number , but that may have been a number just bandied about.
Declan
Granted, the first user of the U-2 was the CIA, and early versions of the Blackbird family were developed for CIA use (including the YF-12A interceptor - why the CIA needed a mach-3 capable interceptor is beyond me…), but by the late '60s/early '70s the sole operator of the SR-71 and most U-2s was the 9th Strategic Reconaissance Wing at Beale AFB. If you want cites I’ll have to wait until I’m at home this evening and can write down titles and authors from my bookshelf…