The picture of a missile with imager provided before is labeled as “Х-38МЭ” - it’s another general purpose mockup, I doubt any of on-board electronics is even operational. Here’s a photo without conveniently blurred label.
1 Like
thats a heat signature…
thats a thermal silhouette.
difference being
- intensity
- number of hotspots
Aim-9X seeker is built for thermal signature tracking.
IR-AGMs are built for thermal silhouette tracking.
basically one can be imagined as a point, while the other is a bigger polygonal target
uhh, havent read the thread?
the seeker is outlined in red
1 Like
I’m not arguing with you on 9X because I don’t particularly have the energy to explain in detail why you’re wrong here. I highly recommend watching test videos of 9X with seeker video telemetry. It locks on to a silhouette in no small part for countermeasure rejection purposes.
As for the seeker, I already mentioned that I didn’t see any higher resolution images when I scrolled through last night. All I saw was internal reflections. That was my mistake and I’ve already admitted that and adjusted my opinion of what’s going on here.
1 Like
you mean electro optical assisted by infrared? its pretty common on IR missiles nowday, they dont filter out a shape, there is no missile that does this, it just compare background to the target and try to keep the target by using this and if there is some interference they go back to IR guidance only wich ofc can be abused by going low and using stuff like volumetric flares
1 Like
No, I mean imaging infrared. IIR. It does that. 9X uses a staring focal plane array. No scanning is involved.
1 Like
silhouettes change with relative aspect. and with the new wide-band wide-spread flares, silhouette tracking is probably not what the american top IR missile would rely on
although you have caused me to try searching for those videos but i couldnt find any of much relevance (may be restricted by keywords however)
It’s not a TV contrast seeker. It’s not forced to track at a single angle. It dynamically identifies the target. It’s not the only CCM feature in 9X, far from it. But it is very helpful.
ah that, yeah that is pretty new, but this sensors need a huge ammount of components specially a good sensor to get a better quality image if not it may be counterproductive in certain areas so i dont think stuff like the KH-38 MT having an IIR sensor would require a LOT of FOV and ofc a LOT of components and way of producing a high quality image at that distance would be too heavy, i think they might be using something else by that case, thinking about it the seeker would really require a lot of stuff to work properly with good enough quality
Almost all IR air to ground munitions use focal plane arrays of some kind. I can buy a cheap one with USB on AliExpress for like $200 USD (before tariffs).
Before they used staring arrays which began in the 90s/early 2000s, scanning FPAs were used. Like the one in AGM-65D. It used a linear detector with a rotating mirror. That used a contrast detection type system as far as I know.
1 Like
thats completely different lol.
i know, but thats why it doesnt rely on the silhouette. it uses silhouette for CCM but it tracks the Thermal signature.
theres also the matter of seeker range. Aim-9X is meant to be used at very very short ranges. while KH-38MT (if it exists) is meant to be a standoff weapon with nerly 40km of range
@Armen_Lozone
I’m seeing a lot of new information today that’s helpful to my learning.
I appreciate all the posters here, y’all are great.
The probability that Kh-38MT and Hammer IR are supposed to be launched in a different manner than AGM-65 is a huge potential for changing their playstyle.
2 Likes
theyre both pretty much the same.
however Hammer is IOG up till 1.5km to target after which it locks it with IR.
idk abt 38MT but it is also IOG until some point
1 Like
I’m bringing up TV contrast because that locks on to a fixed “hot spot.” 9X does not. It uses the IR silhouette to track the target. If it only tracked heat signatures it would be extremely vulnerable to advanced IR decoys.
^^
Can I get CCM unabbreviated please?
In IIR those two are the same thing. Unless you mean intensity for “thermal signature,” in which case no
Counter countermeasures. Methods to avoid a tracking system of any kind from being decoyed by countermeasures. This includes things like leading edge range gate trackers for old radars, guard gates for slightly newer systems, dual band IR seekers (like 9M), etc.
2 Likes
counter counter measures
1 Like
i was under the assumption that IIR uses both but separately for CCM purposes
and yeah thermal signature would be a thermal hotspot imo
The other thing here is signal processing. AGM-65D, for example, is basically a TV guided missile still (contrast tracking through scan lines) while 9X and more modern missiles process the whole image digitally and then identify a target based on certain criteria.