It’s a very strange question, to say the least, but I must ask…as the title says, How SMALL could you make a guided air-to-air missile? Could you build one the size of a “Mosquito”? I mean, even settling for an older guidance system design, like a semi-active “beam rider”? I’ve seen the electronic “brains” of a 1960s-vintage AIM-7 “Sparrow” at a local air museum, with a collection of circuits and wires crammed into a space the size of a coffee can. And I’ve seen modern 1GB Hard Drives that are the size of a quarter. So, nowadays, how small could we squeeze down the necessary components for an AAM?
Well, thanks for your patience, and I’ll add the requisite “No I’m Not Going to Try and Actually Build This,”
The problem is that are you get smaller, you lose the ability to go fast enough to intercept anything. You can’t carry enough fuel to get anywhere. And you can’t carry a warhead big enough to do any damage.
Those are what set the minimum limit. If all you had to do was fly a few tens of thousands of feet at slow speed and land on something or hit it with a bug or something, you could today build such a vehicle the size of a small bird.
Taking the OP literally, I cant imagine a small enough and close enough AIR target, to require a very small missile (unless u want to plant a homing device on it or something - but thats gettin a bit ‘007’ though).
Instead of a tiny air-to-air missle, which would have a tiny warhead and very limited range - use a 27mm cannon instead, much more effective.
I was thinking something along the lines of “Model Aircraft vs. Model Aircraft,” btw. (Not that it would be practical to control an armed model aircraft via Radio Control, of course) Not “F-22 attacking a MiG with AMRAAMs the size of your thumb.”
It is certainly practical to pilot an armed aircraft by remote control, it can be done now and has been done since WWII (and possibly before that) - it just isnt practical in the sense of being legal.
You could have two people controlling, one for the parent aircraft and one for the ‘passenger’. This is possible, I’ve seen it done at model air shows. That was for a second ‘carried’ aircraft to be released and landed separately from its host.
Targeting a model from a distance to hit another model would probably be pretty tricky, but not impossible (unless as your OP indicates, it is fire and forget).
I saw a childrens film once about smugglers using model aeroplanes to carry diamonds (I think) and the heroic kids in the film, armed their own model plane with darts, held back by rubber bands and triggered remotely. Of course this was a kids film, so it wasnt explained how they managed to actually hit the enemy model - poetic license no doubt.
Thanks for the info on the piloting aspect, Chalkpit.
So, does anyone know how far down it would be possible to shrink down the guidance systems for even an early-generation AAM? Like an AiM-7 or AiM-4, or even an AiM-9?
You could fit enough C4 in a regular bullet to mess someone up big-time. I’m sure there are other explosives that would work as well. I’m sure if one of the smart guys the military-industrial complex has working for them could rig up a small guided rocket if they really wanted one. Nanotechnology is going to bring us some scary stuff, children.
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country…corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.” - Abraham Lincoln
My WAG is – not much smaller than they are now. The military is always upgrading the things. IANA weapons engineer, but it’s not only a matter of making smaller computing circuitry, it’s the sensors themselves. For beam riders, you need a radar antenna of a certain size depending on the radar frequency. For active radar missiles, you need a transmitter (and I imagine a significantly beefed up power supply). For infrarad, you need a good quality wide angle lens, and an array of sensors behind it. I’ve heard also that you need some kind of coolant, presumably to increase the contrast between the missle (which will heat up as it punches through the air at Mach 2 or 3) and the targets ahead of it.
And if they DID shrink the guidance system, it’s unlikely they would shrink the missile. They’d load in some more fuel or some more explosive.
Sidewinder missiles currently in use are pretty small compared to most of the stuff that hangs out under a plane’s wings.
Some of them don’t even use a warhead, but have a metal rod that runs down the length of the missile, that the heat seeking head will drive straight up the engines of the plane it’s tracking, wrecking it nicely.
Sidewinders run 9’5" long, 5" diameter, 40" wingspan (all fin)