Ok, here’s the situation. Tom (pilot) and Tim (rio) have an evil Libyan MIG on their tail about to get a missle lock. Why isn’t their F-14 equipped with a missle targeting system that Tim can use to lock onto the jet that is following them and destroy it first?
They do. The F-14 is the most advanced air superiority fighter in the world. It can target & engage over half a dozen enemies at once. If the target is behind them, when fired, the missle will do a big U-turn and head for it.
I can’t say why they don’t; probably a physics thing (aerodynamics and what not). But the concept is intriguing.
How about this: a missile case full of ball bearings that are pneumatically expelled rearward like a shotgun? Imagine that Libyan jet sucking a half-dozen or so of those suckers into it’s engine intake.
I think the OP meant why aren’t there missiles that are facing backwards in order to shoot the enemy more quickly that waiting for a missile to “make a u-turn” and do the same. That said, I think it would make things just that extra bit more complex and it would be harder to fight effectively.
Then again, I spent all my military time in either the Navy or the Army so what do I know? 
Xploder
Some variants of the SU-35, which have been tested with rear-firing missiles, have a separate rear-facing radar. Supposedly, it also has rotating missile pylons, though the aerodynamics of this confuse me a bit.
Then again, the idea of letting an opponent behind you, even if it’s so you can shoot at him, is probably a hard sell to pilots. Most of air combat manuevering is designed to either get behind an opponent, or get him out from behind you.
ExTank, I really like that idea, but at an effective range, wouldn’t it be a little late?
yeesh…I haven’t posted in so long I forgot how to type.
Perhaps the “shotgun” analogy would work well with a proximity type mine. i.e., when the package of bearings (or whatever) got a certain distance behind the firing plane, a shaped charge sort of like a claymore mine could blow the bearings towards the attacking plane?
Ants: Thanks, I didn’t know that. I should remember that everything I see in the movies is vastly oversimplified. Xploder had it right, I was wondering why there are no rear-facing missles, but your explanation explains that, too.
Trucido: The idea that I was proposing wasn’t that the pilot would let someone get behind him/her, it was more a question as to why there isn’t an active weapon system for when they do.
My guess is that rear-firing missiles would have a negative airspeed for the first couple of seconds of flight. It would no doubt tumble and fall out of the sky, and the direction it is facing when it does get airspeed would not be known.
Ahh, another person who believes the “F-14 can do anything!” myth. What a crock. No aircraft can match the Tomcat’s reputation (including the Tomcat itself)
First: Nobody has ever made ANY missiles with an off-boresight capability near even half that. The under-development AIM-9X will be able to reliably launch off bore at something like 40-60 degrees, but that’s still not 180. Whoever you heard that from was feeding you a line of BS. Even the most-excellent Russian R-73/AA-11 “Archer” isn’t capable of THAT.
However, the thread here deals with rear-facing missiles, so I’ll treat that as the topic for the rest:
Second: You can’t target things behind you. The radar can’t see backwards. It’s mounted in the nose of the aircraft and has a limited maxmimum scan range, these days usually somewhere along the lines of 120 degrees horizontal and 120 degrees vertical, and even this is only by making repeated sweeps of the 2 to 3 degree radar beam.
People in the cockpit also can’t see behind them, especially not while pulling the high G’s that is common at close-range air combat. (this is a moot point at medium and long range combat, since you’ll easily be able to point the aircraft at them) Even if they could, the US currently doesn’t have an operational fighter helmet-mounted sighting system to be fed targetting info with (although one is in the works for the F-22 and AIM-9X) – so you’d basically be firing blind.
Third: Close-range missiles use IR targetting, and coming out of the rear of the aircraft is hot engine exhaust (likely afterburner) and countermeasure flares (especially flares, since in this hypothetical situation, the probability of an enemy missile launch is high and you need the countermeasures already in the air) which could spoof your own missile.
Fourth: The probability of kill for your missiles would be much smaller than the enemy’s, since yours are performing a head-on intercept while theirs are coming right up your tailpipe…thus your tighter launch parameters are far within those of your enemy to launch on you. You won’t be able to use these rear-firing missiles until when the enemy already has a very good shot at you: a situation you desperately want to avoid at all costs.
Fifth: mounting these rear-firing missiles means one shot less forward, reducing your total combat effectiveness. Combine this with the other four, and it’s completely a waste.
Basically, Hollywood -is- presenting a false picture of air combat. If one aircraft ever gets nicely saddled up behind another (as they spend 70% of the time in movies) then the fight will be over within seconds. Air combat is much more dyanmic and extreme than is presented on screen, but this is one of those cases where a realistic presentation would not make for good cinematography: it would be extremely difficult to film and most of your audience won’t appreciate it anyway 
Mekhazzio: Thanks! I thought that it had something to do with the head on shot vs. up the tail pipe, but your explanation clarifies things a lot. At least “Top Gun” got that part right.
OK, how about this. I’ve always suspected that the “hit the brakes and he’ll fly right by” bit wouldn’t work that way in real life, but I don’t know enough about it to be sure, or understand why. Can anyone explain whether this would actually work for Tom and Tim?
I heard a story about a propeller-driven airplane that shot down a MiG-15 in Korea. The story goes that the MiG was behind the (Skyraider?) and the American pilot chopped the power and extended the dive brakes. The MiG flew By and the pilot got him with guns.
No cite. Could be a Military Legend.
I don’t know the details of the fight Johnny, but I do know at least one Skyraider did down a MiG in Vietnam.
I too went F-14???
And I also thought, unless it is on a rotating pylon, then you would have to let the bad guy get behind you because otherwise you would have less shots. If it is on a rotating pylon then you would have to wait until the pylon had rotated before firing. Might take a while.
As for the pop the brakes he’ll fly right by thing. I didn’t think that air brakes had that much an effect (although I am hardly an expert). With the skyraider, it would have been able to fly at a much slower speed without stalling than the MiG was capable of. I’d belive the story, but I doubt it happened very often.
Li
(Oh, I think it only happened once.)
That reminds me of another story. I used to be in the USAF Auxilliary, Civil Air Patrol. The squadron commander used to be in Alaska. Sometimes the FAA would ask if he would mind being intercepted by some F-4 Phantoms, the air force wanting to give their guys some practice.
I don’t recall if the sq. cdr. was CAP, USAF or civilian at the time, but he would be flying along in a Piper Cherokee and the Phantoms would pull alongside. They were already flying near stall since the Piper wasn’t that fast. One trick the sq. cdr. liked to play was to very slowly decrease his power. The Phantom drivers would adjust their airspeed ever so slightly and sq. cdr. would pull some more power. He said something about seeing bleed air coming over the Phantoms’ wings as they struggled to stay airborne. He said he would pull power slowly enough so that the Phantom pilots didn’t realize they were being had until they fell into a stall. I can see that working once.
The guy liked to tell a story, so I don’t know how true that one is either.
I seem to remember hearing somewhere that the Air Force had developed something like the shotgun idea for the B-52 for the rear turret. Something like it fired a cartredge that would explode a short distance after being fired and spray the area with explosive pellets, or some such thing. Anyone else ever hear about this?
Just one comment, that doesn’t have much hard data. It does however basically agree with Mekhazzio’s thoughts.
In the movies, modern aircraft are usually portrayed dogfighting at close range. This scenario is very rare in modern aerial combat. Most air-to-air conflicts are over before the two aircraft reach visual range.
Dogfighting is becoming a relic of the past, much like trench warfare.
It’s aerodynamically impossible for a rear-facing missile to exist: at cruising speed, even just hanging under the wing would cause such instability as to be torn asunder.
When the missle is launched, it’s still flying backwards at several hundred miles-an-hour.
You ever try playing darts throwing the dart fins-first at the target? The dart wobbles in the air and you miss…
bad idea for defending your plane.
A much better idea is to simply use a bomb with a small drogue chute…let your opponent catch-up and collide.
The F4 Phantom was originally fitted with only missiles because it was thought that dogfighting was no longer relevent and guns would be wasted weight. Korea, Veitnam, and The Falklands (don’t know about the Gulf) proved that although dogfighting isn’t as important as it once was, there will always be times when the other guy gets close enough for missiles to be useless.
I would have thought some sort of devices attached to parachutes* or (some such) that can simply be ‘left behind’ for the pursuing enemy to fly into would be quite useful; they wouldn’t even have to be explosive, just nasty enough to wreck a jet engine.
*[sup]Yes, I realise that ordinary parachutes would simply tear apart - I’m using the term to describe anything along those lines[/sup]
Not impossible, a prototype of such a missle has been tested on the Su-35 Super Flanker. The missle overcomes the aerodynamic problems by fitting a tailcone over the engine exhaust which is jettisoned at launch, and the launch rails use a gas cartridge booster so the missile’s engine doesn’t have to overcome the aircraft’s full forward speed. It was also mounted on rotating pylons so it could be fired in the forward direction as well. But the missle has remained an experimental prototype and is not in operational service.