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From: tek@CS.UCLA.EDU (Ted Kim (ATW))
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: fire and forget
Message-ID: <8235@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 13 Jul 89 03:09:30 GMT
References: <8178@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: tek@CS.UCLA.EDU (Ted Kim (ATW))

>In article <8078@cbnews.ATT.COM> Greg A. Hooten writes:
>
>AMRAAM (Advanced medium range air to air missile) $900,000 a
>copy for the first few, but promises to drop this to about $370,000.
>Fire and forget, USNAWR says that Sparrows and Phoenix can replace,
>but neither are fire and forget missiles.  Leaves plane vulnerable.

In article <8178@cbnews.ATT.COM> Nicholas C. Hester writes:
>
>If i remember correctly, the Phoenix is a fire and forget missile.

The Phoenix (AIM-54) is not always fire and forget. The Phoenix is an
active radar homing missile. But the active homing portion of its
flight is only in the terminal phase (last ~15 miles or so). Now, the 
Phoenix is fairly fast, but it has a long range (~100 miles in the
head-on part of the firing envelope). If the Phoenix is fired at long
range, the target has time to maneuver away (assuming the target knows
it's being shot at). To keep the Phoenix on target before it goes
active homing, target updating information is fed to it from the
launching Tomcat. To feed updates, you need a radar lock-on. To
summarize, short shots are fire-and-forget, long shots are often not.

The AMRAAM has a similar active homing range but a much shorter
overall range. Thus, it is pretty much fire-and-forget. 

The reason that the active homing terminal phase is not longer has to
do with the relative power and size of the active homing radar. If you
required the Phoenix to be active homing all the way, the missile
would be huge (it's already big).

-ted

Ted Kim                           ARPAnet: tek@penzance.cs.ucla.edu
UCLA Computer Science Department  UUCP:    ...!ucbvax!cs.ucla.edu!tek
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