Eurofighter Typhoon (UK versions) - Technical data and discussion (Part 3)

The IIR sensor itself is known to be the same, but that doesn’t necessarily extend to the rest of the seeker hardware / processors, etc. With ASRAAM being a much larger diameter than AIM-9X it has up to about 70% more volume per unit of length. That’s a lot more room for more powerful image processing hardware.

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The EU actually made a better missile than others ?

everyone else :

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Yeah that’s common too congress will take a look at something that is probably successful and just axe it because someone at the GAO said it might be expensive/ come late or the air force brass decide the project isn’t what they need despite it being solid at the time

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Still can’t wrap my head around it how they could nearly finish developing (up to test firings) and pouring all that money into an “early-ASRAAM” in the 1970s with an all-aspect HOBS seeker (HMS compatible), thrust-vectoring (55G overload and 118° AoA demonstrated by the “QuickTurn” test vehicle) and more range than the AIM-9 and still say “nah, don’t need it” in the end. The F-14 would have been hella undertiered with this missile in WT :D

Best part of this: The improved AIM-9, which was chosen instead of the AIM-95, was just supposed to be a stopgap/interim solution but we all know how that faired. The proverb “there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution” still holds true until today.

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The funniest thing to me is I found a presentation from 1999 in which the US Navy discussed the various improvements they would like to make to AIM-9X in the coming years. Most of the stuff they wanted (things like increasing seeker gimbal limits to 135°, increasing range, increasing speed, etc.) are all things that we AIM-95 would have done two decades earlier.

It’s also telling that none of the major upgrades they wanted seem to have come to fruition (guess they were all too expensive).

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So ASRAAM were shit till Post Blk 6?

A seeker doesn’t have to be shit for a seeker that is over 20 years newer to be better than it…

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ASRAAMs current seeker is just well over a decade newer

well, say that to the guy that posted the 9x ‘meme’

Wasn’t this just a rocket boosted bomb?

Not comparable since it was the end of the Cold War with huge budget cuts, certainly not the case for PL-15 and AIM-260 development

The really big thing about the BLK6 is that we can now sell them without the americans blocking every sale

With datalink/loal why would this even matter? Datalink would guide the seeker head to the target after launch anyways

DL is from a Blk.2, thats somewhere around 2010.

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It made 3 infact.

I meant AGM-124.

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when is that peak speed of aamram? How many sec till the peak?

~10-15 seconds after launch. You can see this in replay or on the map when it hits peak speed and starts slowing down

really? statshark says around 7.5-7.7 seconds and that lines up with how long the motor burns.

There’s a short time in between end of motor burn and the missile decelerating

how long for it to travel in 20km?