Well yes, it’s more in between 9x and R27 ET in terms of range/size, although it remains quite light at 112kg / 160mm diameter
As for the price, it mainly depends from contract to contract, and depends on support for an export customer, training, etc
MICA is more expensive than 9x no doubt (since it’s also more capable) but not by that much
Will be replaced by MICA NG IR this year anyway (new sensor + Dual boost)
How expensive was it? As listed on PDF page #131 the average cost of a AIM-9X Block 1 AUR (1289 AUR produced) in 2017 dollars was ~$282,000 across all produced lots + excised options for the USN between ~2003~2017.
The Block II (“-9-2”) are ~400k per AUR, and “Block II+”(“-9-3”) had not entered full scale production so were not yet spun up at the time.
Don’t read French; but (source) claims that 840 (370 EM + 470 IR) AUR were ?produced / planned? for 1,815,000,000 Euro; so 1,815,000,000/840 = 2,160,714 2005 Euro’s, the exchange rate was 1.19 USD to 1 Euro ( 0.84 Euro cents to a USD), so 2005 USD it’s 1,814,999 per AUR, account for inflation from 2005~2017 it’s 2,277,995 2017 USD.
So a unit cost of between ~2.3 and 1.8 Million 2017 USD (2,277,995 ~ $1,795,337, depending on the exchange rate); so it was somewhere between 6 & 7 times more expensive per AUR (sort of).
"Le coût total de ce programme est évalué à 1,815 milliard d’euros, en
diminution en raison des ajustements intervenus ; le projet de loi de finances pour
2005 ouvre pour ce programme 58,87 millions d’euros en crédits de paiement et
138,3 millions d’euros en autorisations de programme. "
Machine Translated;
“The total cost of this program is estimated at 1.815 billion euros, in decrease due to adjustments made; the finance bill for 2005 opens 58.87 million euros in payment appropriations for this program and 138.3 million euros in program authorizations.”
I wouldn’t exactly say that that’s close
It’s totally is by little compared to the capabilities, 9x is quite high despite reusing old sidewinder body if i’m not wrong, and mica come in 2 variants and is more comparable to aim120a than 9x.
600k for all variants from the french senate (40k diff ~ between em and ir)
https://www.senat.fr/rap/a03-076-7/a03-076-712.html
So where is the above source getting it’s numbers from?
Isn’t blk1 9x basically the same as blk2 asides from data link and loft that blk 2 has? Also aim9x on the claws and nasams is really not bad it’ actually smacks pretty hard. Around 10km range on aground launch platform you can probably get close to 17km range when launched from a plane.
Outside of the addition of LOAL (HOBS cued) There are other hardware changes to various subsystems as well, but yeah, Nothing else relevant as the HLG motor(yet to be refit), and Block III(canceled), II “Plus”(-9X-3) and “-9-4”(refit to increase reliability with Laser INS introduced in Block II) are otherwise minor changes
you are using the whole program, including R&D, to calculate a unit cost
Did the French government somehow get their R&D budget refunded in whole?
No, but i’m not really sure the figure given for 9x takes the R&D into account.
Besides, R&D is just not money but an investment in your Defense industrial base. Some is refund to state with the taxes generated by export contracts, but usually not all of it (not a particular case for France though)
You need to realize that the AIM-9X is just a further development of the AIM-9M, not a clean-sheet design, and leverages risk reduction and design work done for the AIM-95, BOX-OFFICE and AIM-132, among a multitude other Programs of Record And is the “budget” option, vs the AIM-132.
Basically all other 5th gen missiles are going to be clean sheet designs that can’t even approach leveraging the Sidewinder’s industrial base, or reuse much of the existing infrastructure so also have to pay for the move to an 8~10" diameter in other ways.
It’s also a “Joint” program, so the budget is apportioned to the relevant service’s budget depending on “need”, and bespoke features included and funded by the respective services for the Project Office.
It just subtracts the cost of Government Furnished Equipment that has already been built (and is accounted for in other line items, so it doesn’t get double counted), and in DoN (“Department of the Navy”) inventory as components from select prior AIM-9 variants can be recapitalized on to produce Sidewinders in the baseline AIM-9X configuration. As specified this is only for the DoN doesn’t include nor reflect production quantities for the Army, USAF, FMS clients, or “other customers” in the provided totals.
Nothing says that the entire missile needs to be new built and is why the baseline -9X’s cost about 100K less than later blocks since they are remanufactured wholesale or in part from AIM-9Ms. And that isn’t solely extended to the US Government, FMS clients that also have stocks of earlier Sidewinders may also benefit
Never heard before about HLG, searching for it saw some sources saying it provides at least 20% more thrust just from changing for HLG, now i can see how theres missiles not much more bigger than AMRAAMs with claimed ranges of 300km+
Do you know if 120D-3 uses HLG?
Look in AMRAAM discussion
See people talking about MICA and AIM-9X
what else can we say man, amraams have been cooked for since august 2024, and only got worse, at this point we’ll get aim120d and it’ll likely be just as shit
In game “IIR” seekers simply use combined tracking suspension and gatewidth. Same as Stingers.
I am aware. But like i said, if you get the proper IIR implementation you could not expect a huge difference.
I have heard anecdotes that the RCS of the sidewinder and pylon on the F-35 is negligible and the increase is fairly minimal. Obviously the L-O capability is better when ‘clean’ but the sidewinder and pylons don’t hurt that much.
Sure, but it’s not envisioned to be used operationally, for either of the Counter-Air, or the Air Interdiction (N.B; “Interdiction” is an A2G mission, “Interception” denotes an A2A tasking) mission sets;
As per the details of “Figure 1-1” on page#35 of the Declassified version of “DOT&E Assessment of Post-lOT&E F-35 Block 4 Operational Testing” document, there was no approved configuration that included any external stores at all.
So I’d have to assume that even if it might be small, it should be considered as an operationally significant impact to said characteristics. Thus probably not a worthwhile tradeoff when expecting an actually contemporaneous threat even when intel indicates the presence of aircraft.
“As discussed earlier, two 4-ship formations of F-35s were used in these combined trials one performing the OCA mission roles - sweep/escort and S/DEAD - to reduce or eliminate the enemy aircraft and SAM threats”
The US considers 9X blk II to be a low observable store when mounted on the F-35s
Well yes
AMRAAM and 9X are both cheaper and easily mass produced
other IIR are usually new designs and therefore more expensive, with no “mass production” per se. I never denied that.
I will point out that MICAs development was shared with the EM variant, as the main body of the missile did not need to be developped twice.
With all that being said, sometimes paying for the development of your own stuff is important, even if there’s cheaper elsewhere. I would think this is quite obvious in 2026.
The initial claim was that MICA was less advanced than 9x, i never said anything about the cost initally anyway. This got out of topic long ago, feel free to continue in the MICA thread if you wish to do so.
