IRIS-T - The pinnacle of IR guided Short Range Air to Air Missiles

I’ve seen nothing that indicates that it lofts.

Yeah IRIS-T is a short range missle in the sense for close combat, lofting wouldnt do to much

so after reading about this some more, it would appear that the “max speed” is not in fact mach 3 but rather above mach 3. Diehl’s website said

Der Flugkörper erreicht dabei eine Geschwindigkeit von deutlich mehr als 3 Mach

which was translated to

reaches a speed of clearly more than 3 Mach

which is not really a great translation as it should be more of “considerably more than 3 Mach” or “significantly more than 3 Mach”

3 Mach is just not the speed limit.

Can you link the source, i didn’t find it on the Diehl website?

Diehl Defence: IRIS-T, the short-distance missile of the latest generation (archive.org)

tbf it says “clearly above” in the english translation lol

I changed it in my thread from MACH 3 to MACH 3+ 👍

Diehl Defence started a collaboration with south korean companies to further develop the IRIS-T missles, additionaly the IRIS-T was choosen as the main short range armament for the south korean plane KF-21

KF-21, FA-50/T-50 use the IRIS-T and this partnership is likely to produce the missiles in SK instead of shipping them across the world.
Regarding the further development, Diehl states that they’re “incrementally developing new versions of IRIS-T” which is obviously aided by having more customers and in return more money

Diehl entwickelt IRIS-T mit südkoreanischem Partner weiter used that one, but besides that more people recognising the superiority of the iris t the better, and development news are always great aswell

like everything, it will need some updates. I’d say the seeker and the motor are top priority there.

even better seeker definitly would be intresting, since it immediatly would upgrade the ground launched variants as well, besides that longer motor time/faster /better movement always is a nice addition

higher resolution seeker will help with countermeasure rejection and possibly visual identification.
with the motor i was thinking more about the range than the maneuverability as that is already very high but more range would allow for both longer range shots but also re-targeting

As far as I known as Korean the integration of IRIS-T to KF-21 is temporal and export use.
because when KF-21 was at designing, US didn’t allow integration there 9X to KF-21.
And The Korean government tends to favor American-made weapons for efficiency reasons.

the story behind it is a mess…
delays and cost n stuff made them pick the IRIS-T but they still plan on integrating AIM-9X but thats very expensive because they’re doing both at the same time so the funding isn’t necessarily there

some other sources say they chose it to not have a full reliance on the US (because with IRIS-T and Meteor they have 2 top of the line missiles that aren’t made by the us) which was kind of the point of the aircraft

but then there’s also weird statements like “the german missile is heavier and uses different launchers”

its a mess.

i have yet to find any AIM-9X videos or pictures with the KF-21 though

Currently the cost of total program dosen’t matter to Korean Gov.
Because KF-21 needs to replace old KF-5E and F-4E of ROKAF.

And this does not mean that the Korean Gov. and the MoD will replace arms procurement from the United States to Europe. this means they will develope there own weapon system.

Because currently flyable KF-21s are builted before when integrate 9X.
And there is no additional built now.

more question about KF-21 is wellcome. DM to me

Are you sure it refers to the IRIS-T missile and not talking about totaly new version sutch as the IRIS-T SLM and the IRIS-T SLX?

If it refers to the IRIS-T (=IRIS-T SLS) then new modification are often very rare especially for those very modern missile. The navigational law for better energy management (=better range) and the algorithmes behind the seeker for better flare rejection can be upgraded but hardaware wise it’s hard to modify a whole seeker/ motor without making a “Block” sutch as the ASRAAM BLK 1 and BLK 6 or the AIM-9X BLK 1 and BLK2.
You can’t change the seeker or the motor of every missile in your inventory.
And for new made one you cannot have lots and lots of version asweel since it would really suck for maintenance.
So, for modern misille you mostly have Block that come (VERY approximatly) every 10 years or masive upgrade (very approximatly) every 20 years (sutch as the MICA NG).

I do think there were 2 version of the IRIS-T:

  • The AIM-2000
  • The AIM-2000A

But i don’t know their difference at all.

Calm down mate lol.
The IRIS-T is an excelent missile by all means and probably the best one in Dogfigth but saying it’s superior to every missile is simply not true.

those are not “incremental”

just me meming , ignore me

Do you know any of the differences (if there is any) between the:

  • AIM-2000
  • AIM-2000A

i have never heard of AIM-2000A before…