April 25, 2017
Weaponry on U.S. Aircraft
On this page you will get a brief overview on commom air-to-air missles used by aircraft. Below are some terms that will help you understand how missles work.
IR: Infared (heat).
SARH:Semi-Active Radar Homing.
ARH: Active Radar Homing.
Seeker: What missles use to "see" the target and how they track it.
FOX-1: Designation for a Semi-Active Radar missle. ex. AIM-7
FOX-2: Designation for an IR missle. ex. AIM-9
FOX-3: Designation for a Active Radar missle. ex. AIM-54/120
Weapon Directory
Each section is divided by missle so it will be easy to navigate, please use the quick weapon navigation guide to go to certain sections.
The Sidewinder is a IR missle. This means that it chases the heat exhaust of jets.
Pilots mostly use this in close-range battle, (dogfights/ turnfights)
The Sparrow is a SARH missle, this means that the aircraft must maintain a radar lock on the enemy in order to guide the missle all the way to the target.
Imagine pointing a flashlight at a moving target and guiding a rocket to it. The pilot's radar had to keep shining on the enemy until impact, which limited maneuvering freedom.
The Phoenix is an ARH missle which has its own radar seeker within. This allows the pilot to fire the missle and not have to worry about maintaining a radar lock like the AIM-7. However, the missle will only active once within a certain distance from the enemy aircraft, this is known as going pitbull.
It was initially made for long-range fleet defense. This was the "big stick" carried by the F-14 Tomcat.
It was designed to shoot down Soviet bombers before they could launch missiles at U.S. Navy ships.
The AMRAAM is also an ARH missle but a more modern one, and has technological improvements over the AIM-54 Phoenix. In simple terms, it is similar to smartphones, as newer models come out, new features are created.
The AMRAAM is the more popular, and better overall compared to the Phoenix. It still has the same tracking essentials with its own radar seeker.