The AIM-54 Phoenix missile - Technology, History and Performance

with the new tacview we can see how bad the speed is on the Aim-54

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it turn really good TBF

I fired a phoenix at 10000m, mach 1.1, it reached diving a max of mach 3.5, but what got me was the drag after the burner stoped. Bro went mach 1.5 in like 5 seconds

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i havent had any chance to see the turning capability yet.

Its definitely going to be interesting testing missiles with this new feature.

Its also probably gonna be pretty depressing in the case of the AIM-54

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Was it the A or C variant?

Also on the bright side F-14 finally got drop tanks!

Looks like the only change for the AIM-54C on the dev server is that fin AOA change that was cancelled 2 weeks ago.

Missiles motor is still not reduced smoke, still no increased max G load, still no trajectory shaping or aerodynamic changes. Seeker is also still a copy paste of the AIM-54A’s and the 54A also got the change, so the 54C is STILL STRICTLY worse than the 54A

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C variant

all of the new Fox-3’s feature steeper loft angles as well.

yeah now the missile is deadlier in close range.
I Tested it in test drive and now you can actually hit the bots with aim-54 from 4 km

which the 54 isnt getting from the looks of it lmao

Really still just looks like gaijin is doing the absolute bare minimum possible to model the 54C properly. The fact the 54A from 1966 is outperforming the AIM-54C from 1986 in all aspects is embarrassing

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The finAoA means a lot.The g-load of missile is just the upper bound,not actual performance.The finAoA is the thing decide how the missile turn.Some missile (especially mistral) hava a terrible performance in game because the low finAoA make them impossible to reach their statcard G-load.

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I understand fin AoA means a lot, but we have claims from Hughes it pulls up to 25g. Just because gaijin fixes one aspect of the travesty of underperformance that is the AIM-54C, doesn’t mean its accurate.

As stated earlier;

  • Theres around 20 years of difference in seeker tech, yet gaijin model the seekers as 100% identical
  • The max G load is known to be too low, 32% too low, which is a MASSIVE nerf
  • The trajectory shaping being so poor still significantly impacts the missiles kinematics
  • The warhead on the 54C is still inferior to the one on the 54A despite using much newer directional warhead tech to increase lethality between 20-30%
  • The motor is STILL a regular high smoke motor (despite more and more missiles being added with reduced smoke motors)

Increasing fin AOA is a welcome change, but its the equivalent of a billionaire donating 100$ to charity. Its better than nothing, but they could/should do MUCH more and are refusing to do so

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Did an 85km launch at 11,000ft, mach 1.1, and the missile topped out at mach 2.8. After it barely lofted another maybe 5-6k feet.

Just sad.

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you doing any manual lofting? You should test the 3 situations shown in the ALSM doc.
image

Like i stated earlier, these values aren’t even accurate, they’re the bare minimum identified by NASA with public info and unguided ballistic launch simulations, but it would help to see how good gaijins model is compared to NASA. Particularly with the speed retention of the 45 deg launch:
image

Should hold above Mach 3 for over 100 seconds at the bare minimum with this launch condition.

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ill do my best to recreate.

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The best i’ve been able to do so far is 43k ft mach .8 achieving mach 3.7 so with more space and speed it could get over mach 4.

Guess that’ll be easier to test in a controlled environment on the live server

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Any report on this?

Not that I know of, but we do have so solid documentation for this iirc.

The 7M is also missing this feature btw.

Originally spoke about it a few months back and everyone called me an idiot until documents were found proving it to be true. Also have this cool picture from one type of early directional warhead blast
image

It seems the 54C’s warhead used the second method (it uses a heavier warhead with less HE in it, hence why its worse in WT) while the 7M uses the first method (same HE filler weight, higher velocity in desired direction).

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