Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!cbnews!tek@CS.UCLA.EDU
From: tek@CS.UCLA.EDU (Ted Kim (ATW))
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Sparrow miss rate off Libya
Message-ID: <5640@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Apr 89 01:12:11 GMT
References: <5603@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
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From: tek@CS.UCLA.EDU (Ted Kim (ATW))

>In article <5588@cbnews.ATT.COM> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>...  "One would think
>pilots in Soviet ready rooms are smiling over a 1-for-3 Sparrow
>success rate from America's best."

>From: maniac%garnet.Berkeley.EDU@ (George W. Herbert)
>Suprise!  In Vietnam, Over Israel, and everywhere else that guided missiles
have been used in combat, they have had actual hit percentages in the range
>of 10% to 25%.

At the risk of provoking a lot of heated discussion ...

I think it's clear that there are a lot of ways of making AAMs miss.
Some involve ineffective design. Others, involve what the enemy does.
(evasive manuevers, jammers, decoys, etc.) However, one should not
discount the effect that a missile has of putting your opponent on the
defensive. If he sees launch smoke (or sees a missile contrail or
hears radar lock-on warning), your enemy is not going to be thinking
about anything except that missile. While your opponent is avoiding
your missile, you use the distraction to set up a position of
advantage. There was an article a while back in USNI Proceedings
suggesting, that we build a cheap version of the Sparrow missile
("Smokey Sparrow") precisely to exploit this effect.  

I don't have any detailed info on the Libyan encounter. But from what
I have heard, it's certainly possible that the Sparrows put the
Libyans on the defensive, which the Tomcats pilots used to their
advantage.  

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