135 pounds of HE warhead to the face
A precursor to the AMRAAM
The United States Airforce had WVR dogfights very well covered with their short range, but very effective AIM-9 Sidewinders (Infrared Homing) and Aim 7 Sparrow (Semiactive-radar guided) missles. Fast and effective the Short to medium range(20 to 80km) air to air missles carried with them a prefragmented or HE warhead that used superior speeds (upto Mach 4) and small size made air to air kills against manoeverable targets easier, ensured higher crew safety as it almost eliminated the need of aircrafts to get into merges with bandits by allowing the carrier aircraft to lock and shoot against bandits that carried only guns in the 1950s and early 1960s. Even in scenarios the carrier aircraft would merge with a bandit, missles allowed for the carrier to neutralize the bandit when the bandit would extend away in a dogfight to gain airspeed or open up several angles for the carrier jet even if they couldn’t get nose on, on the bandit to align for the perfect gun solution. Getting a Fox 2 shot at a bandit would always be satisfying for the pilots who flew jets before the era of fly-by-wire controls as stress on pilots while fighting with the controls during rate fights or trying to pull the nose while the plane was slow all while maintaining visual or in the assessment window wasn’t an easy thing to do.
Americans soon realized the need for longer range missles which would hit targets with almost similar accuracy as the sidewinders while being able to travel unforeseen distances all while still retaining the capability to acceptably perform manuevers againt Soviet bomber formations like the Tu-16, TU22M, Tu-4Ks. The US navy soon found that the above bombers of the Soviet Union and some others could drop long range nuclear tipped supersonic (Mach 4.6 during terminal phase) cruise missles that could travel in excess of 700 kilometres like the Kh 22 that threatened NATO warships, i.e the bombers could potentially drop their payload at beyond the range of then US carrier based airdefence systems and could saturate their airdefences given they had a large strike window in between detection and the time jets scrambled would take to reach within range of shooting the bombers down.
LONG RANGE MISSLES WERE NOT THE FIRST PRIORITY
Funding went into long range extremely high speed interceptor projects, the XF-108 Rapier and the Lockheed YF-21 interceptor to defend US carrier groups all of which were eventually cancelled as the operational requirements asked too much to squeeze from available technology and metallurgical solutions for use in extreme performance aircraft designs and development of new technologies would lead to extreme cost overruns.
THE INCEPTION OF THE LONG RANGE MISSLES
AAM-N-10 Eagle(Cancelled without any protopype)
To effectively counter the threat of Soviet supersonic bombers wanted to develop and invested heavily on land and carrier based interceptor projects. Funding started on the the F6D Missileer project that was to be armed with the AAM-N-10 Eagle (a fairly long range missle, 300km under perfect weather condition) over the contempory AIM-7 missle). The AN/APQ-81 Radar was to track for and semi-actively guide the missle. Soaring costs and an uncertain future of the project led to its cancellation.
AIM 47 FALCON
The Falcon went into development to be armed on the YF-12 interceptor (the proposed interceptor variant of the SR 71 Blackbird) The cancellation of the above project left the Falcon without an operational launch platform that could integrate the fire control radar required to fire and guide it and carry a effective operational load of the unusually heavy missle system. Work began on a separate variant of the medium weight multirole fighter-bomber F111 Aardvark, the F-111B. In 1968 the F-111B was cancelled given advancements in soviet bomber and bomber escort technology along with massive advancements in Soviet Electronic Warfare and Surface to Air missile technology that rendered the F111 a very unsurvivale frontline interceptor platform againt superior soviet defences. The AIM 17 by them was fitted id several upgrades and the name was changed to the AIM 54 PHOENIX.
AIM 54 PHOENIX
The US navy started their VFX Naval fighter project after the collapse of the F-111B project from experience gathered fighting Soviet Migs in the Vietnam War. The AIM-54 Phoenix would finally get its mother aircraft in the VFX program later renamed the F14 Tomcat. The massive swept winged F14 Tomcat could carry six Aim 54s although an airsuperiority load out would include two Phoenixes, Two Aim 7s and two Sidewinders.
FEATURES OF THE AIM 54 PHOENIX
1) Active radar guidance: Unlike the AIM-7 that is a semi active radar guided missle(in which the aircraft radar cannot track targets while guiding the sparrow), the Phoenix was an active radar guided missle. Equipped with the evolving DAtalink starting with Link-4(during Operation Desert Storm) the missile would be guided through its course. It receives mid course guidance from the mother aircraft and at around 20km from the target the missile would activate its own phased array radar and home in on the target.
2) It reached maximum speeds of Mach 5 and was powered by a rocket motor burning solid propellant
3) Maximum altitude: 80,000 to 100,000 feet.
4) Tracking: AN/AWG-9 radar could track 54 tagets in track and scan mode and could engage six bandits simultaneously.
Later upgrades of the Phoenix included the Link 16 Datalink when it came equipped with the F14D variants giving greater situational awareness of the airspace.
The AIM 54 has recorded successful kills againt Mig 25s, Mig 23, Mig 27, Mig 21 aircrafts given the massive warhead and exceptional speeds.
PROS:
1. Very long range missle and a massive warhead of 135 pounds ensuring target neutralization from larger distances as the missle uses a proximity fuse to detonate. One missle can take down multiple jets in close 3 or 5 ship formations.
CONS:
1. Very susceptible to effective countermeasures and jamming. Notching the missile while dropping 6 to 8 bundles of Chaff while reducing altitude rapidly can effective make an AIM 54 lose lock and not reacquire.
2. Can pull around 10 G’s under practical scenarios as againt the nearly 50 G’s of present day BVR missles.
AIM-54 Phoenix IS very similar to the Soviet R37 Missile.
It was replaced by the smaller, more manuverable AIM-120 series of missles
