Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: gwh%monsoon.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: AA Missiles on weapon racks?
Summary: Yep, but not common.
Message-ID: <1990Jul23.202633.6610@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 23 Jul 90 20:26:33 GMT
References: <1990Jul18.040859.14332@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: The OCF Gang: Making Tomorrows Mistakes Today
Lines: 39
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: gwh%monsoon.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)

>From: scott%sting.Berkeley.EDU@ (Scott Silvey)
>Are air to air missiles ever mounted on multiple weapon racks
>  to increase the missile carrying capacity of combat aircraft?
>  I'm thinking of the weapon racks that allow 2 or 3 weapons to 
>  be carried on each hardpoint.  Is this even feasable?  Do
>  these racks require that all their weapons be released simul-
>  taneously?

Yes, though not commonly.  The Brits have a 2-Sidewinder rack that the
Harrier uses.  It was introduced _just_ before the Falklands conflict.

>I've seen configurations with multiple Mavericks per hardpoint,
>  so I don't THINK they require simultaneous release.  I just 
>  can't think of any reason why I haven't noticed multiple
>  Sparrows or Sidewinders per hardpoint (excluding special cases
>  like the F-14 or F-15 which can carry 2 Sidewinders on the
>  inboard mounts in addition to a standard weapon load).

The reason you don't see a lot of these is simple; it's bad for missiles to
trip over each other's fins on launch, and getting them far enough apart to 
keep this from happening usually leads to 'well, it's just as easy to add
another hardpoint, and then we have more flexibility' reasoning in the
engineering staff.  What the F-14 and F-15 (and for you astute aircraft
weaponeers out there, F-111 8-) and F-4 even do is just get multiple uses from
a single hardpoint.  Making a hardpoint big enough for a MER (Multiple Ejector 
Rack) means that you can, quite neatly, fit a pair of sidewinders on the sides
of the rack, meaning that you've only got one rack to carry most of the time,
which makes a lot of sense.


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