The AIM-7 Sparrow is an American medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile operated by the United States Air Force, United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and various other air forces and navies. Sparrow and its derivatives were the West's principal beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air missile from the late 1950s until the 1990s. It remains in service, although it is being phased out in aviation applications in favor of the more advanced AIM-120 AMRAAM.
The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile(AMRAAM) ( AM-ram) is an American beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. It uses active transmit-receive radar guidance instead of semi-active receive-only radar guidance. When an AMRAAM missile is launched, NATO pilots use the brevity code "Fox Three".
The AIM-54 Phoenix is an American active radar-guided, beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (AAM), carried in clusters of up to six missiles on the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, its only operational launch platform.
The Panavia Tornado Air Defence Variant (ADV) is a long-range, twin-engine swing-wing interceptor aircraft developed by the European Panavia Aircraft GmbH consortium. It was a specialised derivative of the multirole Panavia Tornado.
The Meteor is a European active radar guided beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) developed and manufactured by MBDA. It offers a multi-shot capability, and has the ability to engage highly maneuverable targets such as jet aircraft, and small targets such as UAVs and cruise missiles in a heavy electronic countermeasures (ECM) environment with a range far in excess of 200 kilometres (110 nmi).
An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft. AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid fueled but sometimes liquid fueled. Ramjet engines, as used on the Meteor, are emerging as propulsion that will enable future medium- to long-range missiles to maintain higher average speed across their engagement envelope.
Semi-active radar homing (SARH) is a common type of missile guidance system, perhaps the most common type for longer-range air-to-air and surface-to-air missile systems. The name refers to the fact that the missile itself is only a passive detector of a radar signal—provided by an external ("offboard") source—as it reflects off the target. Semi-active missile systems use bistatic continuous-wave radar.
The RIM-7 Sea Sparrow is a U.S. ship-borne short-range anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapon system, primarily intended for defense against anti-ship missiles. The system was developed in the early 1960s from the AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile as a lightweight "point-defense" weapon that could be retrofitted to existing ships as quickly as possible, often in place of existing gun-based anti-aircraft weapons. In this incarnation, it was a very simple system guided by a manually aimed radar illuminator.
The Hawker Siddeley Red Top was the third indigenous British air-to-air missile to enter service, following the de Havilland Firestreak and limited-service Fireflash. It was used to replace the Firestreak on the de Havilland Sea Vixen and later models of the English Electric Lightning.
The RIM-162 Evolved SeaSparrow Missile (ESSM) is a development of the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missile used to protect ships from attacking missiles and aircraft. ESSM is designed to counter supersonic maneuvering anti-ship missiles. ESSM also has the ability to be "quad-packed" in the Mark 41 Vertical Launch System, allowing up to four ESSMs to be carried in a single cell.
A beyond-visual-range missile is an air-to-air missile that is capable of engaging at ranges around 40 km (22 nmi) or beyond. This range has been achieved using dual pulse rocket motors or booster rocket motor and ramjet sustainer motor. Medium-range, long-range, and very-long-range air-to-air missiles fall under the category of beyond-visual-range missiles. Older BVR missiles generally used the semi-active radar homing, and modern BVR missiles use the active radar homing guidance.
The AIM-152 Advanced Air-to-Air Missile (AAAM) was a long-range air-to-air missile developed by the United States. The AIM-152 was intended to serve as the successor to the AIM-54 Phoenix. The program went through a protracted development stage but was never adopted by the United States Navy, due to the ending of the Cold War and the reduction in threat of its perceived primary target, Soviet supersonic bombers. Development was cancelled in 1992.
The AIM-95 Agile was an air-to-air missile developed by the United States. It was developed by the US Navy to equip the F-14 Tomcat, replacing the AIM-9 Sidewinder. Around the same time, the US Air Force was designing the AIM-82 to equip their F-15 Eagle, and later dropped their efforts to join the Agile program. In the end, newer versions of Sidewinder would close the performance gap so much that the Agile program was canceled.
Aspide is an Italian medium range air-to-air and surface-to-air missile produced by Selenia. It is provided with semi-active radar homing seeker. It is very similar to the American AIM-7 Sparrow, using the same airframe, but uses an inverse monopulse seeker that is far more accurate and much less susceptible to ECM than the original conical scanning version.
The Mitsubishi AAM-4 is a medium-range active radar homing air-to-air missile. It is a modern beyond-visual-range missile developed in Japan and intended to replace the semi-active radar homing AIM-7 Sparrow missile in service. It has been operational since 1999. The main contractor is Mitsubishi Electric. The 2010 AAM-4B was the world's first air-to-air missile with an AESA radar seeker.
F-4 Phantom II non-U.S. operators are the non-U.S. nations with air forces that operate or used to operate the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. The Phantom II entered service with the U.S. military in 1960 and served until 1996. During this time it was the primary interceptor, air superiority fighter and fighter bomber with the U.S. Navy, Marines and Air Force.
The Short Range Air-to-Air Missile, or SRAAM for short, initially known as Taildog, was an experimental British infrared homing air-to-air missile, developed between 1968 and 1980 by Hawker Siddeley Dynamics. It was designed to be very manoeuvrable for use at short range in a dogfight situation. The SRAAM was unusual in that it was launched from a launch tube instead of being attached to a launch rail, allowing two to be carried on a single mounting point.
Have Dash was a program conducted by the United States Air Force for the development of a stealthy air-to-air missile. Although the Have Dash II missile appears to have been flight tested, the results of the project remain classified, and no mass production is known to have been undertaken.
An inverse monopulse seeker is a type of semi-active radar homing that offers significant advantages over earlier designs. The system requires electronics that can compare three signals at once, so this design did not become practically possible until the early 1970s. One of the first such examples was the Soviet Union R-40 air-to-air missiles used in MiG-25P introduced in service in 1970 and RAF's Skyflash missile introduced in 1978, an adaptation of the AIM-7 Sparrow that replaced the original Raytheon seeker with a monopulse model from Marconi, followed by a very similar conversion by Selenia for the Italian Aspide. The USAF adopted similar technology in the M model of the AIM-7 Sparrow, and such designs are universal in semi-active designs today.
