How good are modern air-to-air missiles?
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- Опубліковано 19 вер 2024
- Imagine you're a fighter pilot locking on to an enemy aircraft with a radar-guided air-to-air missile like America's AIM-120 AMRAAM... if you pull the trigger, what are the chances of a hit?
These days? Pretty likely... but that hasn't always been the case.
NOTE: With the exception of the AIM-7 (combat stats from Vietnam) these success rates indicate chances of finding their target in the absence of countermeasures.
#airtoair #airpower #fighterjets #fighterjet #missile #missiles #shorts
The AIM-7 wasn't that bad, it was how is was deployed at the start. It wasn't designed for close range high G dogfights and rough handling. Many Sparrows that came off the rails were fired in a poor engagement envelop and were often inactive because they had been damaged. Either from G loads or rough handling on deck.
One of the first things Dan Petersen did when he started Top Gun for the US Navy was to send instructors to Raytheon to work with their people on how to harden the missile. The AIM-7 became much more reliable when its electronics and control systems actually worked after they were fired.
On a side note wtf were they thinking arming the f4 with long rage missiles when they didn't have IFF figured out and had to visually id every target
@@leprechaunbutreallyjustamidget They were thinking of Soviet bombers coming over the pole in large numbers and F-4s and other interceptors making high speed dashes and launching their radar guided missiles at maximum range.
In that scenario there was little doubt who was friend and who was foe.
Then Vietnam started and the US had to fight a whole different war than it had been preparing for.
US pilots had to practice dogfighting on their own often in secret. And many of the fighters didn't even have guns.
It was a tough lesson. The payoff was some of the best fighters ever that came after, that are still in the air in most cases.
F-14, F-15, F-16, F/A-18.
Yup. Most old aim 9s and aim 7s were only good to about 3-5 landings 3if you’re lucky on carrier ops.
@@MyLonewolf25wow really? Didn’t realize carrier landings were so hard on ordnance!!!! 😮😮
I think the same thing might apply going in the other direction, though. If you're a 4th gen fighter pilot in contested airspace and that missile alarm goes off, you're in deep trouble.
No wonder stealth on the F-22 and F-35 is so vital.
Right, it doesn't make you invisible, it just means you can fire first.
@@lubumbashi6666 it also makes it harder for a missile to lock on.
@@autobootpilootright... which means you can lock onto them first. Which means you can fire first. You're essentially repeating that guy.
@@autobootpiloot and it also makes it harder for the missiles tiny little radar to maintain a lock
we are yet to see if that is true.
The Meteor really is a beast, really looking forward to what the Peregrine and AIM-260 can bring to the table
im hoping for a new variant of the meteor, maybe also a thicker body missile(like the aim-260 or pl-15) and thus with more fuel and even a stronger booster
Meteor isn’t an AMRAAM it’s a BVRAAM
@@Fenrir.Gleipnir yeah I know, but the 260 and peregrine will also be BVR
We need an even bigger missile that our bombers, and F 15ex can carry.
Stealth planes are great but they are limiting the size, and therefore range of our missiles.
Need to create a hybrid SCRAM and RDE missile for them!
That new air to ground hypersonic missile looks crazy. Props to them. America isn't slacking anymore on missile tech it will seem. Yet we need to do even better. Make it a no contest like we have.
Thank you for recognizing the AIM-54C Phoenix.
Is it just me or was that a HARM in the first launch clip?
Good eyes, that's an AGM-88 as far as I can tell.
I concur. The large forward fins give it away.
@@ATrainGames The cranked tips.
There's quite a few variables that affect the Pk of a missile. Range, altitude, enemy vector in relation to you...these all have a huge effect on your chances. They definitely have come a long way from the Fox-1s of the 70s and 80s to the Fox-3s of today's air forces.
Not only that but countermeasures have evolved too. I feel these numbers are against previous generation aircraft and not 5th generation.
That first missile was a HARM.
Meteor isn’t an AMRAAM it’s a BVRAAM
Most missiles missed the target, guidance got better but what helped most was the fuze sensors detonating the warhead as it passed by the target
When combat start to look like a chessgame. We KNOW what piece are going to win upon an attack.
When I was in the air force I got to meet the pilot who had the first kill with the aim120 in Iraq, and my first base had the jet with the first kill too.
Based on simulated experience, AIM-7s are typically used during chases or dealing with radar flanking targets. In such scenarios, the AIM-7 begins to look more like a 85-90% hit rate.
The AIM-120 has its own flaws despite outperforming the AIM-7 by a large margin. Better range, speed, tracking. You're taught to fire and forget, so you'd forget to extend memory or shorten memory for the target and also support the missile till pitbull. Sometimes painting the target with your radar continously can also make the target easier to track for your pitbull missile despite its capability to burn through even jammers or small RCS at that range to keep better track.
That 90% kill rate is in optimum conditions, many times, they aren't.
Like in 2019 when pakistani f16s scrambled couple of amraams and turned back immediately without guiding the missile enough to reach it's NEZ, while with Wvr missiles, the guidance isn't needed, that's why the Mig 21's r73 took down pakistani f16.
No mig took out any f-16. Multiple independent investigations found all f-16’s were accounted for. The mig-21 likely suffered a mechanical fault and went down in enemy territory. Even though the PAF did not guide their AMRAAMs, the su30’s still had to take evasive maneuvers to dodge the missile. AMRAAMs are quite dangerous. Had the PAF given more guidance, we’d be having a very different discussion today.
*AIM-9 Sidewinder has left the chat*
the iconic AIM-9 wasnt mentioned at all. outrageous):
Modern dogfights are about who is able to detect the enemy first, after that you’re a guaranteed kill.
BVR engagements aren't usually referred to as dogfights. The term "dogfight" is used for close-range fights.
@@potatoskunk5981 funnily dogfight used to also mean two fighter engaging each other under all circumstances, now.. BVR is the norm...
Akchually! Chance is YES because missile knows where it is.
I assume, those PoH numbers are against fighters? As the Sparrow was designed to shoot down lumbering bombers.
The Phoenix missile high success rate was because the Iranians launched it at medium range against the Iraqi's, not long range. Long range shots always missed.
The Phoenix missile was designed specifically for bombers and cruise missiles, both which don’t tend to maneuver real well when you shoot it as a fighter, fighter will jinx, causing the missile to have to correct itself and soon you can get the missile out of sync with your flight profile
@@whclcdr But the Phoenix missiles high success rate was against Iraqi fighters. When the US fired the Phoenix at Iraqi fighters heading to Iran they were all long range shots that missed.
The only difference was distance, not aircraft type.
OK, it should be stated the sparrows greatly improved overtime. In fact the overwhelming majority of kills scored by the F-15 eagle during Desert storm or with sparrows, not a single one was made with the AIM-120.
And the Phoenix was all right, the first iteration boasted incredible range, but it wasn't until the later C variant that it gained solid capability against fighter sized targets
this is why the dog fight is dead and this is the new air to air combat
Percentages are a bit meaningless, since it depends greatly on the conditions under which the missile is fired.
How far away is the target? How fast are you flying? How high are you flying? How high is the target? How fast is the target flying, and in which direction? Are they flying straight and level, or taking evasive maneuvers? Can they duck behind mountains to hide from your radar?
Amraam was where it was at. Too bad it'll take us twenty years to see what they're rocking now.
Good luck from both sides
"Radar guided air to air missile" (shoots HARM)
I always flew with bait attached in the rear.......so hard to hit when you are in the lights.
first, yes, the early sparrows wereboth g-sensitive AND the humidity of SoouthEast Asia were a problem.
second, the phoenix missile was SELF-GUIDED, unlike the sparrow.
The Phoenix had only been effective during testing situations.
Lmao that was a HARM
Remember, it’s a missile and not a hit-all.
It's like anything else, it depends on the target. A bomber is easier to hit than a fighter. How good is the pilot in your target. How fast is the target, is it a crossing shot and how good are the counter measures.
AAM have several hit rate numbers.
For example the AIM-9, the, oldest, the most fired AAM has a 97% hit rate according to the enginners. It goes down to only 21% if you take into account all the missiles fired in combat.
The AIM 54C has a 77% sucess rate based on 1 test firing 6 missiles on 6 evasive drones. 1 of those missed because the motor did not worked!
Only IRAN has used it in combat extensively.
IF you fire inside the missile parameters
IF the target is not too evasive
IF the target ECM, Flares, Chaffs do not seduce your missile or break its lock
IF the missile battery does not ran out
And IF your missile does launch in the 1st place.
(Because maintenance)
IT can achieve the published sucess rate.
IF not see the AIM-9, AIM-4 and AIM-7 actual sucess rate during Viet-nam.
Carnards could not change directional control fast enough
Under what conditions? Is the target following good tactics and performing a notch after launching or are they flying flat and level? In the latter case I'd expect a near 100% success rate. Again I'd be suspicious of these figures depending on the target (stealth or low vis, etc), and other conditions of the engagement like forward pass, a chase condition, etc. Is the success rate given under ideal weather conditions? Is the target capable of turning and outrunning the missile life? is this figure an overall average for all conditions and these sort of considerations?
Honestly, it's probably the latter; I would expect modern AAMs to have a near 100% success rate as far as correctly tracking and engaging the target. If the target is noncompliant (i.e. actively maneuvering to defend and employing countermeasures), then based on simulation data I've seen, the success rate appears to be substantially less than 90% even for the AMRAAM.
After all, to defeat the missile, you don't _have_ to confuse it; you just have to move outside of its engagement envelope, whether that's by confusing it, moving to where it can't track you, or putting yourself into a position where it doesn't have enough energy to reach you. (What makes modern AAMs so dangerous is they have a very wide envelope, whether by having a bunch of energy to maneuver and chase with, flight performance that exceeds what the target can compensate for, or the ability to track anywhere but directly behind it)
That’s optimum PK mostly straight & level, once you maneuver the jet to the edge of the envelope, the % drops considerably
The missile knows where it isn’t
0:08 AGM-88 HARM?
And the whole Patriot Missile system had more than a few bugs
Lol at having a failure of a weapon and it's named "the sparrow"
Combat would be so much more fun if we only had Aim 9B as the best missile
The new AIM 260 is said to be pushing 97% kill rate.
Well that first one was an air to ground missile ..... so pretty low odds...
And now they are developing the AIM-260 which has an even more greater range
the first missle u show is an Harm a/g Anti Radar Missle
🔴 Range to target affects the chance of hit massively, as does whether the missile is chasing or intercepting.
The meteor, is not an iteration of the AMRAAM 120D it is a new design. And i think firing just one against an enemy with Good ECM is unlikely to have a 90% sucess rate. Maybe 3-4 at once from 2 diferent direction.
I play a air force mil sim game in VR, and let me tell you, this is pretty accurate. 90% of the time I get shot down it's from a AIM-120.
That’s why they were called missiles. And not hitels..
No mention of Aim9 sidewinder?
Most western missile uses Passive Radar to hunt target and can easily be jammed. China uses Easa radar commonly found in fighter jets built it into its PL15 missile. 8t travel far and not easily jammed. China can do it as for them they can build Easa radar at a lowet cost and mamy of them.
The AIM-7 should’ve been renamed to the MISS-7
Aren't most missle now proximity fuse, meaning they're not actually supposed to hit just blow up when close enough?
How do flares play into this? In movies if an aircraft uses flares the rocket 100 percent misses, but... movies 😅
How did they get those numbers..
Range is such a huge factor 80% or 90% is maybe at 5 miles but not 40
It helps improve accuracy when the missile’s guidance and control can operate independent of the carrier platform as in “fire and forget”. If you need to keep your mechanically-scanned radar locked on to the target for semi-active RF illumination then older systems could be challenged by not illuminating the target well enough to give the missile’s receiver enough signal-to-noise strength to maintain a high track quality. Tracking with IR missiles was not so encumbered other than by their kinematic limitations. Modern fighters use those amazing active electronically scanned arrays that make multi-target tracking performance a much easier task and modern missile guidance and control can make for a lot more autonomy (read: Pk). In my view that makes the push for better sensor technology a must do task.
For $10 million dollars it better work
9 out of 10? I'll take it. ;). says the guy (me) with a drink in one hand, smartphone in the other.
Love the phoenix.
Where did you get your data regarding the AIM-54?
That's why you never leave your wingman, because you both should fire in case one misses.
Does this include countermeasures?
Chaff? How does that affect the success rate?
Just curious, if the missile misses its target, what does the missile do after that?
The AIM-54 was only fired twice in anger by the US NAVY and missed both times. Iran only had a 22.5% kill rate (to missiles fired for the Phoenix. Not sure where your stats for that missile came from.....
what about the AIM-9 Sidewinder?
Yeah, meteors have a guaranteed kill range of like 50km or something
Why haven't they upgraded the Phoenix missile
The Phoenix was designed to carry a nuclear warhead and take out Russian bomber formations, so "close" would have been good enough.
90% hit rate???....dude needs to crank that plane and dive.
The Meteor! Nobody officially know the "range" or how long it can loiter. With its engine all it has to do is keep it hot and the fuel comes free from the air.
Im going to Embry riddle for aviation and want to go navy. Hopefully ours are godly and theirs are expensive junk
Down this street in Prescott. Go Navy...
the Meteor is not an AMRAAM. they are completely different missiles.
that's like calling the Sparrow and Archer.
Im not saying AA missiles are still bad. But the 80 to 90% Pk is in test. in actual combat I believe the Aim-120’s actual Kill ratio is somewhere around 60%
And this was before Pakistan shot somewhere around 5 Amraams at Indian Sukhoi’s a few years ago achieving 0 hits. (yes I know it was a mission success because the Flankers turned back)
and none of the Aim-120’s successful kills were against high end targets with the most modern DRFM based jammers and reduced RCS
@@unknownuser069 The number complied by Wikipedia is actually lower at 59%
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM
The targets included six MiG-29s, a MiG-25, a MiG-23, two Su-22s, a Galeb and a US Army Blackhawk that was targeted by mistake.
Now if you can provide a better source for this, I’d be happy to read it.
@@unknownuser069 What? Aim- 120C in Ukraine war? Fired from Fulcrums? Source?
@@unknownuser069 OK, but this post is about AIR TO AIR missiles not SURFACE TO AIR missiles.
@@unknownuser069 Same missile, different launch methods. Is that confusing to you? After launching a fox-3 AAM the launcher can go cold, and the missile relies on its own, which can be not so good due its tiny radar. SAMs can rely more on datalink, because the launcher will not turn the radar off. It that confusing to you? Anyway, the initial post was about AAM, and you are pointing a SAM version.
@@unknownuser069 I am not saying that a SAM will perform better. I am saying that you have advantages too, despite having an initial kinemactic energy lower than an aircraft launched missile. Laughable is to assume that a system, with different guidance due launch profile ( inertial+ final active) vs datalink will perform in the same way. I am sure Sea Sparrow have a better pk than air launched Sparrow. Other than that, it is laughable to assume that shooting down choppers, Frogfoots and others with SAMs is as easy as shooting down Foxhounds ( armed with R-37s) with aams, good logic!
The funny stuff is that you explained why 100% success rate: shooting with close range from a hidden SAM battery. AFAIK Ukraine doesn't operate stealth aircraft to shoot AAMs in the last minute. Thanks for being so funny.
Bad guy? Don’t you mean enemy?
Against non-maneuvering targets or counter measures. Not a fair test.
No. BVR missiles have excellent results only in testing and under ideal conditions. BVR missiles are difficult to deploy because of the risk of fratricide. At the end of Gulf War I, an American fighter shot down a friendly helo using a BVR weapon. they could have gotten in closer to confirm the identity of the helo but didn't. This is the problem with firing a weapon at something you can't even see.
Chances are Excellent, especially if you're flying for America.. they'll get it right up the ol' Wazoo
The answer is we likely do not know. There has not been a large scale peer to peer conflict that can measure real-world efficiency. Today's numbers are based mostly on controlled tests against drones or on a very small sample set of real data.
There’s a reason they don’t call them hittiles lol.
Id like to see someone get a bvr kill with the cannon.
but but muh lessons of korea vietnam in air to air combat, you always need a cannon😢
Meteor is a BVRAAM, not an AMRAAM, iirc.
Imagine it? I'm gonna go play DCS 😎
They are called missles! If they were meant to hit something, wouldn't they be called hittles?
@SandboxApp I concur that Meteor has a very high rate of success but I still don't have any data to prove it. Please can you give a link or source for that fact?
The AIM 54 has a 0% success rate in actual combat service with the US navy.
Yup!
What if the other guy is stealth too?
Can we make it +95% or better?
I mean it's just pure skill and luck... Like all you can do it fire back and run away at low altitude or get behind a mountain and then pray
Can reapers carry air to air missiles ?
Unrelated, I’d like to hear your thoughts on what the Mosul orb could possibly be
FOX 1...FOX 1!
B2 bomber has air to air missles?
It would really matter what you were shooting at surely?
If DCS is anything to go on, the Meteor and Python missiles are OP
Thus all dogfighting ability is pointless. At least against Western jets. Stealth tech means you get radar info much sooner than your adversary and can fire first.
Would be interesting to know the stats of Russian missiles, looking at the jets & missiles in Ukraine's arsenal vis-a-vis Russia.
DCS disagrees...
90% success rate **
To be read as. When a first rate power is invading an unstable middle eastern country using SU-22s and mig 19s. Not actually against someone their own size
AIM-120 was not operationally deployed until after Desert Storm in 1991
But Desert Strom Air Wall Operation always use BVR combat, even without AIM 120, Air Wall Operation is really kick in the ass to Iraq
@user-kx4xs2xd3k the point is AIM-120 was not operationally deployed during the 80s
90% against conventional targets...but what if the target is a J-20A or Su-57?
The j20A would be tougher as far as we know, the su57 on the other hand is essentially a su35 with a body kit which so the rate would still be decently high
then it would be 99.99 %
But when your shoot with guns they say it’s always successful or you have skill issue