- Yes
- No
Old body, new face
History
Around the 1970s, many countries were working on developing the next generation of IR missiles. Germany, USA, UK among others. Most interestingly, the predecessor to our star today is the BGT Viper Missile. While it never made it to production and was at a stage where only mass production remained, the US Aim-9L program overtook it due to a number of factors being cost and speed of development, even though the viper was better than the 9L in a number of ways.
What Germany had that the US did not was modern cooled IR seeker technology. This was what gave the Viper an edge over the 9L. So when the engineers discovered some issues with the seeker being developed for the Aim-9L, there emerged a risk of the whole program being rendered defunct. This led BGT to offer a hybrid of the Aim-9H body with the Viper missile seeker-head.
While initially the body of the Aim-9H from the Navy was intended to be used, Deihl utilised the new Aim-9L body (as the seeker was not ready) and mated the Viper seeker to it. This missile was named the ALASCA missile.
Mundane fact: “ALASCA” stands for ALL ASpect CApability.
Testing
This missile was tested at China Lake until 1978 on US Navy and F-4F Phantoms (presumably German as no one else had those), but was not adopted since the issues with the Aim-9L were resolved by that point. The ALASCA had a 30% larger seeker detection range as compared to the Aim-9H.
Technical Specifications
Launch weight: ~87kg
Aspect: All-Aspect
Lock Range: 7.15km (30% more than Aim-9H)
Missile Acceleration: Same as Aim-9L
Missile Thrust: Same as Aim-9L
Maximum speed: Same as Aim-9L
Maximum overload: Same as Aim-9L
Warhead mass: 4.58 kg (TNT equivalent) Same as Aim-9L
Maximum range: Same as Aim-9L
ALASCA missile in War Thunder
Two aircraft in War Thunder can receive this missile:
- F-4F Late
The other is the US F4 (navy (i cant remember the exact variant)) but i might have to make a separate suggestion for that.
