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

Sounds good boss. One day we will be able to use the F-14B and feel good about it!

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Do you happen to mean that the radar is slewed to the target via the AWG and then acquires the track itself post launch. As there is a physical impediment for all 4 missiles in the centerline stations if they were to attempt to track a target with their own onboard radars pre-rail detach, that being the front two missiles for the rear 54s, and the station windbreaks on the front two, omitting the airframe itself for any targets above the F-14 as well.

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Not quite, the data is fed to the AIM-54s in place of the seeker going active on the rail, by the relevant sensor
[Radar, IR, EO, IIR, Datalink, etc.] (Angles, Range, Rate(s), etc.) which facilitates pre-relock maneuvers / seeker slew, after launch until angle tracking / lock-on can be re-established.

So in effect the Missile is locked-on to a simulated target, fed via the onboard sensors. The difference between the modes is how much missile knows about the intercept and so how much it can subsequently optimize for the highest SSPk.

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Yeah thats what I was getting at, as how you worded it initially sounded like the seeker goes active on the rail and tries to acquire something then launch.

The statement you made is basically invalid because you didn’t add precondition.
For example, against a target flying at Mach 1, any missile launched at 1000km away, including feared PL-21 or new Aim-260 in dev, any maneuver, including crank-and-turn (or do nothing) will defeat the missile.
Simply because missile does not have infinite propellant.

A missile capable of hitting maneuvering target means a target pulling very high Gees at certain speed (like we know in a test Aim-54 can keep up with a Sabre pulling 7Gs? in a dive at around 1000km/h)

You are also stretching the argument where “Aim-54 cannot hit targets moving aggressively as they do in War Thunder”. All missiles aren’t tested like this nor designed like this. Since the movement between target and missile can be simplified into a two dimensonal plane that contains both the position of target and missile that aligns with target’s direction of acceleration.
Since target is moving in a non-static two dimenstional reference frame, the only thing the target can do is either: pull Gees, or rotate the plane of reference.
Rotating the plane of reference yields 0 Gees (equivalent to roll your plane with 0 pitch 0 yaw when missile is fired at you), thus the only thing target can do is pull Gees, which is why all missiles specify the G they pulls, occasionally the G of target can pull without miss (with precondition, e.g. target speed and missile’s impact speed, etc.); and almost never advertise them as a “dogfight” missile.
Which is why no one talks about crank to turn or aggressive maneuvers when discussing missile specs. They don’t even say “missile can defeat aggressive manuevers” from target or anything similar.
Missile only flies in two dimensional plane, it only cares about Gees, i.e. centripeltal acceleration.

Furthermore, if you go to Aim-120’s official website, they never said anything about how “dogfight capable” the Aim-120 is.
So, if we are applying your standard or argument, most missiles that ever existed, including R-73 and Aim-9X, are NOT dogfight capable because they didn’t say it.

https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/air/amraam-missile
https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/AIM-9X-Sidewinder

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@Gunjob @k_stepanovich any reason why the AIM-54’s loft code remains so poor and isnt modified to something like the loft code tested by another user last week, seen below?:

Loft profile test:

Current in-game loft profile:
image
Improved loft profile:
image

seems like a very low effort way to help the AIM-54 be more relevant, and a bit more realistic. As can be seen in the test above, a small change to the loft profile improves speed at impact by 36.1% iun exchange for a 3.9% increase in time to target from a 75km launch. The difference in performance is pretty noticeable…

I’m also curious to know why the devs have opted NOT to give the AIM-54 energy management code like all other radar missiles added after the AIM-7F? As it stands, the AIM-54 has full gain after 3.5 seconds of flight regardless of time to target, while all other top tier radar missiles have gain relative to time to target.

Guidance Autopilot code AIM-7M (left) vs AIM-54C (right):

ALL new ARH’s also got both better loft code values than the AIM-54’s, AND energy management code during the recent test as well…

I could maybe understand if it was something the AIM-54A lacked, but that the AIM-54C received seeing as irl it received a new control section for missile flight control, such as fin control (not modelled in-game, like many other AIM-54C improvements over the AIM-54A…)

Considering the complexity of the AIM-54 missile, it seems odd that it uses an inferior flight control system in-game than something like an R-23R, or that the 1986 AIM-54C variant would not incorporate missile flight control advancements seen on other american missiles a decade earlier, as I’ve seen some people say its an “old” missile, so it makes sense that it doesnt get energy management/flight optimization code.

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Honestly, we need to fix the Aim 54 and get maybe the F15N sea eagle as an evant vehicle. It could carry the Aim 7MH and the Aim 54C or the F14D

It never existed, they made small model mockups for it but iirc realized that the process of navalizing the F-15 would lead to it losing most/all of its performance advantages over the F-14.

The lofting code for fox-3 is new and in test. So that’s why its not on a missile in production.

I think i may have explained myself poorly.

The loft code has not changed in form or function with the new fox 3’s, the values just make more sense, so the missiles actually loft. As can be seen above, all that was changed to gain that performance improvement was 3 values out of 4 that define the loft profile of a missile in WT. The exact code used for the modified loft profile was literally provided. This isnt groundbreaking stuff…

AIM-120A vs AIM-54C guidanceAutopilot code:

There is no difference in the loft code besides the values used, and the timetogain code is already on MANY missiles in-game, its just oddly not on any of the AIM-54’s, and I’m trying to figure out what the justification for that is.

As I’ve explained previously, the loft code in WT is OLD, and many ground attack weapons also have loft code, the timetogain code is also old, with it being implemented with the AIM-7F, which pre-dates the AIM-54A/C in-game. The AIM-54’s just “happen” to have some of the worst values set for its loft profile, which makes it barely loft, and the energy management code is entirely missing…

Not exactly “new and in testing” when all the code im asking about is almost 3 years old and seen on dozens of weapons already in-game…

It seems questionable at best that the missile which would be able to best take advantage of lofting, and whose primary role is long range interception has the worst loft code and literally no energy management code.

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Testing by others doesn’t show such a large improvement in performance with slightly higher loft angles.
image-21

Peak velocity went up by 0.1 mach, impact speed went up by 0.05 mach… The conditions are given and that is comparing the current loft angle to 35°…

@Gunjob I think Mythic is exaggerating or overstating issues again. If he wanted to make a report I’m sure he could, but idk if it is worth the effort to keep pinging Stepanovich and tech mods all the time for these same non-issues.

Oh, and it doesn’t matter at all if target is a much lower alt.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/955829235493273680/1222206986343415818/image-73.png?ex=66155ff5&is=6602eaf5&hm=5629699e3e81a3d971458e01c58efcc6136a1ae3e575da8643b5fcb704e01de0&

F16AJ never existed

And shouldnt have been added, whats your point? Also, the AJ is more of a real plane than the F-15N

There are differences with the data that Mythic was basing things off and either of the table(s) you have supplied, so is it at all surprising that they have somewhat different results?

They have different ranges(75 vs 80km), launch speeds(Vc of 2.4M vs 2.1) and Altitudes between ((9km vs 6km Co-altitude, & LD) every set.

And as such they will be impacted by their Autopilot coefficients and drag constants differently , let alone if they were adjusted or not.

I don’t know, does a TTK delta of; 0.3 vs 2 seconds not make a massive difference? Let alone the TTK being reduced by more than 10 seconds? as per your table(s)?

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Do you want another strike aircraft as an event reward?

Not like strike aircrafts are the only thing there are prototypes of, its just because gaijins lazy and likes reusing models for “event rewards”. They could add the F-111B and it would be a cool event vehicle if they fixed the AIM-54’s a bit more.

Also, the F-15N and strike aircraft rewards are pretty off topic for an AIM-54 thread

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The time to kill difference was only so large when comparing to the 0° loft edit, the normal ~17° loft exhibits very similar performance to the 35° loft.

Please read the charts properly and don’t reply for Mythic. He can just stop pretending he’s blocked me and participate directly.

Of course the testing done has different results - it isn’t aimed towards making the AIM-54 look as though it is underperforming. He’s clawing for things that he thinks will make a difference and they won’t. It’s actively stirring up drama without good reason.

I don’t think 2s and 0.05 mach higher speed at the end of the engagement is going to be noticeable, since 80km is already a stretch for the use-case of the missile. You’d want it much closer to peak speed to maintain maneuverability… Which is at 30s or so (right at end of burn).

It was the 9km table vs results from;

which Mythic had requested that they be expanded on, and so likely what the subsequent position(s) were based off.

I have? The fact that various properties are not similar limit the potential to draw conclusions based on both of the charts that were presented.

It’s not that it’s underperforming, but non-optimal and thus SSPk / terminal performance could be potentially improved by adjusting the numbers especially considering we lack detail for the actual lofting schedule / shaped trajectory methods that the AIM-54 specifically employs.

Though if it was anything like the Maverick, pulling 3~4G vertically until 20 / 16 degrees of vertical seeker angle was achieved and held until impact would be interesting to see if it could be made work.

Considering that maximum ranges for the AIM-54 are listed as 52 / 63 nmi [96, 115km], 80 km is somewhat close to the listed maximum range or a multiple release, its not completely without merit.

As any missile with a complex autopilot implementation nailing down the root cause of issues is difficult at best, as the potential to isolate issues and work backwards to suggest improvements can have knock-on impacts elsewhere, which would need to be considered.

Depends how aggressive the loft angle and the details of any potential trajectory shaping constraints are, since with any induced super-elevation effective Net thrust is reduced, due to gravity, and assuming a TWR <1 there will be some profiles where the peak speed is not at end of burn, let alone the impact of non-constant propellant burn.

I’m sure that the details of said impact on optimal terminal performance (range) vs loft angle could be compiled for various launch conditions, but it would be significant work to map all conditions even if interpolation was used to find the relevant points of inflection.

The place to start would be to figure out under what conditions the missile’s G-limit is reached.

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This wouldn’t be a useful situation for comparison to the game. They want enhanced loft, increasing loft angle won’t do that as shown.

I take it from the fact you’re arguing with someone I have blocked that MiG_23M is disagreeing with the tests done by @dark_claw and hasnt even bothered to properly replicate the test, and possibly not even the changes to the loft profiles code provided by Dark_Claw?

Pretty typical of him to perform improper tests then draw conclusions to match his beliefs. Its because of that type of intellectual dishonesty and general attitude I dont interact with the guy anymore.

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