Vietnam-era Sidewinder and Sparrow poor performance modeled accurately?
-
Is the poor performance of the Vietnam-era Sidewinder and Sparrow modeled accurately in the Vietnam campaign?
From the book “Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War” by Coram:
“of all the tactical weapons used in Vietnam, air-to-air missiles ranked among the most disappointing”
“The Sidewinder missed its target and plowed into the ground so often that pilots called it the Sandwinder. And the Sparrow could be defeated by the simplest avoidance maneuvers.”
“Sparrow missiles performed so poorly they were considered little more than extra weight; more than one pilot punched them off his aircraft as soon as he was away from home base.”
" (a phantom pilot) checked his eight missiles. Seven indicated malfunctions. Only one came on-line, and he selected it to fire first …"
-
There’s quite a bit more to it than that. Among other issues identified in the Ault Report, there was little training on proper firing conditions as pilots thought it was a “magic bullet” that they fired simply by pressing a button regardless of the geometric relationship between the firing aircraft and the target. Also, the care and maintenance of the weapons, especially for the Sparrows, in the warzone as compared to the stateside facility resulted in issues with the motors and electronics since combat operations did not often allow for compliance with the manufacturer’s spec handling procedures for the weapons. Among other objectives, the purpose of Top Gun was teach how to deploy the phantom’s weapons as well as tactics and acm.
-
Yes good - to add to that cocktail of conditions……that mostly pre solid state tech was killed by vibration and the environment…and was proven a bit too fragile in a operational environment.
Overall 50% to 70% of all missiles fired were put down to hardware failure…and with the Sparrow they were also dependent on the radar actually working and the missile had to be tuned before it could be used…which also used to fail…that environment caused no end of problems with those electronics.
Missiles had to be launched at near one G and AoA (particularly in the Rolling Thunder period) to stand any chance of hitting anything… they would often lock onto a cloud or just anything else I think …an F-8 tactics manual for the AIM-9D which did have a cooled seeker still advises the pilot to only fire below a target at a clear sky.
The USN improved things through pilot training such as Top Gun, whereas the USAF tried to solve the problem by technical means. The USN through training and perhaps some better AIM-9G/H seemed to have more success in 72.
The USAF on the other hand…well their most advanced sidewinder the AIM-9J still only achieved 4 hits out of 31 attempts at MiGs in 1972. The missile was tested at medium altitude and had good results (92%)…but in combat it was used at low level…some of the comments next to each one fired has things like “good tone - hit ground” or “good tone, guided, lost in Haze”…so high humidity maybe a factor there also.
-
…radars kinda sucked back then too, compared to today.
-
Yes good - to add to that cocktail of conditions……that mostly pre solid state tech was killed by vibration and the environment…and was proven a bit too fragile in a operational environment.
Overall 50% to 70% of all missiles fired were put down to hardware failure…and with the Sparrow they were also dependent on the radar actually working and the missile had to be tuned before it could be used…which also used to fail…that environment caused no end of problems with those electronics.
Missiles had to be launched at near one G and AoA (particularly in the Rolling Thunder period) to stand any chance of hitting anything… they would often lock onto a cloud or just anything else I think …an F-8 tactics manual for the AIM-9D which did have a cooled seeker still advises the pilot to only fire below a target at a clear sky.
The USN improved things through pilot training such as Top Gun, whereas the USAF tried to solve the problem by technical means. The USN through training and perhaps some better AIM-9G/H seemed to have more success in 72.
The USAF on the other hand…well their most advanced sidewinder the AIM-9J still only achieved 4 hits out of 31 attempts at MiGs in 1972. The missile was tested at medium altitude and had good results (92%)…but in combat it was used at low level…some of the comments next to each one fired has things like “good tone - hit ground” or “good tone, guided, lost in Haze”…so high humidity maybe a factor there also.
Do you happen to know whether A2A missiles were effective in the 1973 Yom Kippur war? It seems in BMS A2A missiles almost always work, whereas at least for historical campaigns prior to the Balkans it would be more realistic if missiles worked 10% of the time.
-
The level of detail for the Arab Israeli wars is less…more dependent on historians such as Shlomo Aloni translating the data into English…but using the Vietnam data should be a good basis really.
Difference between Nam?.. there might have been less water in the air and probably more heat from the ground (Desert)
I don’t have any exact numbers regarding missiles fired…Aloni has the pilot accounts from these conflicts no doubt missing a lot of detail.
They do mention one Shafrir 2 not prox fusing, another just hitting the ground, and another IR missile homing in on a sand dune…but not the full picture.
in Yom Kippur 1973:
Shahak and Nesher used Shafrir 2, AIM-9D and AIM-9G (G is a D with SEAM basically)
F-4Es used AIM-9D and AIM-7E
Arabs primary missile (Like VPAF) was the R3S (AA-2) IR SRM…Israel captured a load of these in 67 and started using them…according to them it was better than Shafrir 1 and similar to AIM-9B.
in 1973 the Arabs were at some disadvantage because the AIM-9D could be fired at much higher G and could pull much higher G than those old R3s.
Overall performance I would say:
AIM-9B <0.15
AIM-9D <0.45
AIM-7E <0.10But of course you cannot just assign that to the missile because if you say fire an AIM-7 (with no missile/radar failures) upwards at medium altitude its PK might be 0.7+ or even the AIM-9B/R3S when fired against a level flying adversary with zero angle off and a clear sky might with no failures be a 0.7 missile…so unfortunately finding a balance that gives the required behaviour is the trick.