Why is it that fighter planes always fire a pair of missiles – at least in the movies, anyway – at their targets? Is it just to make sure that the target gets blowed up real good? Every time I see a movie with fighter planes, I think, “Just fire ONE missile at a time – waste not, want not!” But I can understand if I’m just making no sense, having never been in the Air Force or even particularly good at “Flight Simulator.”
I know something about US Army Attack Helicopters. The pilot of an Apache helicopter can select to fire rockets one at a time, in pairs, or in salvos, depending on the circumstances. Unguided rockets are not particularly accurate, so it’s a judgement call as to how many he wants to fire.
The Hellfire anti-tank missles (laser guided) are Apache’s the biggest punch. I would suppose that in most circumstances the pilot would fire only one of these at a target at a time, simply because that would usually get the job done. They do have a capability to launch more than one very quickly, at different targets if necessary.
What they do in the movies is often for show.
What movies do you watch where fighter jets fire multiple missiles? Every movie I can think of they fire one at a time. That’s how it should be done, like you said one is enough. Attack helicopters always fire in pairs in movies though like Race Bannon mentioned.
I’ve said it before and this won’t be the last time
Movies != reality
Dogfight movies are usually assembled from a mixture of stock footage, static ground shots and now more commonly CGI. I can’t recall any dogfight movies that weren’t total crap as far as simulating reality. Unfortunately if they did a good job the result would be unwatchable as the other planes would appear as specs even at close range.
I never said that I thought movies (and cartoons, because I can’t remember a single episode of “G.I. Joe” where the planes DIDN’T fire missiles in pairs) were equal to reality. But they were my starting point, and since this was something I kept seeing over and over, I wondered why they’d make it a point to be unrealistic over and over.
As padeye don’t pay any heed to what movies show except as entertainment. The military spends lots of time figuring out standard operating procedures for all situations and these change with changing circumstances.
People have been known to fire missiles which they knew wouldn’t hit in order to make the other guy do something he didn’t want to do and thereby possibly gain an advantage.
Aerial “dogfights” are incredibly short. Back in the machine gun days the plane only carried ammunition for about 20-30 seconds of shooting.
FWIW we’re still in the machine gun days and this topic was covered in another thread. 20-30 seconds is actually an incredibly long time for machine gun fire. The M-61 20mm gun used in US fighters is typiclaly setup to fire 50 round bursts which may last about half a second each and there is only enough ammunition in the drum for five or possibly six bursts. The gun carries about twice as much as gets fired as several rounds are unfired while the gun ramps up to speed before the burst and spins down after but those rounds get recycled when the gun is reloaded.
5 or 6 bursts of 50 rounds each is 250 to 300 rounds which is 20-30 sec. at the 500 rds/sec rate of the older 50 cal. aircooled guns.
When I was on a ship the standard surface-to-air missile doctrine was called Shoot-Shoot-Look-Shoot, because that’s what you did 
The missiles don’t have a 100% probablity of kill, so by shooting two you make it more likely you’ll hit what you’re shooting at. You have to balance the loss of two missles from inventory against the consequences of missing, and the likelihood of being in a position to be able to take another shot if you do miss. I imagine there are similar considerations when fighting airplanes.
This probably isn’t germane, but Soviet practice was to carry a mix of IR and Radar guided missiles, and fire one of each at a target to ensure a hit, even in the event of jamming or flares.
Just great! The firing rate of the 50 cal. was about 500 rds/min. Sheesh.