Not being able to hit your adversary because they outrange you and every missile you have can only be described as a technology/capability gap.
US current missile A2A roster is one of the weakest.
Europe has Meteor a superior BVRAM to Aim120D variant included.
ASRAAM, IRIS-T and MICA IR are superior to current Aim9X
Now the US is correcting this shortcoming as they realise their rivals can hit them and the vital command and control/logistics assets that the USAF depends on. In a war destroying a Tanker/EAWACS will have far more lasting effects than shooting down a Gen 5 airframe.
Chinas PL-15 is designed to kill those aircraft. Alternatively the USN has to try and sneak an F-35 into range of Chinas EWACS aircraft for a 120 shot (completely plausible the F-35 is a fantastic aircraft)
we dont know the complete picture with aim120d3, and jatm is already flying unofficially.
aim9x is worse thant iris-t and asraam, absolutely not worse than mica ir, mica ir is more expensive and less advanced. and fox 2s are not really part of the air war equation much, theyre the absolute last line of defense and the aim9x does it job more than well enough.
edit: forgot to mention, i dont have a problem with calling it a capability gap(its what it is) but it isnt technological, the obvious example of that is the AARGM.
idk about slipped up we’ve had reputable sources saying there are 100ds of millions worth of ordered missiles already, there are more and more pictures of it every year, i think its like the aim174b was, the missiles is likely already flying in an unofficial manner. there is somethign to remember that aim260 is not like aim120 was, this time its a special access program, that warrants a much larger degree of descretion, so the fact we are seeing more of it now compared to the dead silence it used to be says alot.
they deleted the post. there was other stuff showing it was in testing at the time but at that point i dont think the public was certain live fire testing was ongoing for the Navy at least
Its a standard missile, it’s production rate can be scaled as hard as any similar missile of it’s family, hence why the yearly production rate jumped from 500 to 1800 as of late.
To that same end, it’s not at all a niche capacity given the SM-6 has the ability to hit anything from a super maneuverable fighter to that same fighter at absolute maximum range, this is not some purpose built “only long range missile” its a SM series naval launched SAM, it can be used against ships, it can be used against ballistic missiles, it can outright hit ground targets.
The AIM-174 is a anti everything missile because thats what the SM-6 is, it’s only limiting factor is the amount being made and Raytheon is more than happy to amp that up and they can do so.
