Kinematically its the same missile since the motor and control surfaces were not changed, apart from the added weight contributing to maintaining inertia so ever so slightly better glide performance for the HE warhead variants, the early variants were very much limited by their seekers ability to track a target so the change to SALH (AGM-65C & -65E) or IIR (AGM-65D, -65F, -65G), was certainly a good thing.
Each of the warheads are optimized for a different target set(Vehicles & armored targets, and Ships & Bunkers respectively) that might be encountered, since the Maverick is used as both; part of an independent Hunter- Killer flight, and as CAS ordnance item to support ground forces depending on what they come up against.
The big issue is that the HEAT as a whole has been balanced so fragmentation / overpressure is very much underwhelming(I am working on a bug report that may get it revised[using figures relating the M151 and M247 2.75" rocket warheads to one another], though I’m 98% certain that I’m going to be told to pound sand so i need to be careful not to overreach).
so (GP)HE designs are still the meta, and so the Maverick loses out its main use case and advantage over its counterparts (Kh-23, -25, -29, -38, AGM-12B, AGM-12C etc. ), you get to carry 3x per station so there is basically no reason to take them over a GBU where possible.
No, The -65D’s seeker digitized their guidance algorithms and work in a much more advanced way. The =65F /-65G add an alternate mode that allows them to track zero contrast target points, via correlation techniques, in place of the normal Contrast methods
Its difficult to explain simply, but as an abstract; the Electro-Optical(AGM-65A & B) Seekers work directly on Visual contrast apparent in the scene, and so compute the centroid location of the target (due to the pilot selecting it) then uses Proportional Navigation techniques (the same way a Sidewinder / Sparrow does) to maintain the intercept course, the limiting factor for Lock on is the size of the Target in the gate, and so depend on the actual size of the target.
The IIR Seeker uses works on Thermal contrast, and digital pixels, instead of an analog video output of the earlier seekers. Since the Seeker is very sensitive (can pick on on sub degree kelvin(centigrade) temperature variations) it images a scene that is very noisy so needs to be cleaned up before it can be properly processed;
This is accomplished by figuring out the values for coldest point in the Scene, and the hottest within the targeting gate; and then assigning each pixel in the Scene to one of eight grey levels(Black, White & six grey levels) evenly spaced over the aforementioned range to produce a contrast map.
This mapping is then processed to produce the target’s centroid and passed on the the guidance stage as seen with the Electro-Optical Maverick, the advantage of using IIR is that Black body emissions don’t depend on the Target’s actual size, but its temperature and emissivity and so bypass a significant constraint on tactical sized targets, so for some targets; say a Chemical Plant or Oil Jack this can significantly outstrip the Missiles performance or Thermal battery so can lead to issues in specific cases.
We don’t know How the CCD Seeker works exactly, but its safe to assume its very similar to the IIR seeker.
