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Skyflash
The Skyflash, or Sky Flash in marketing material, was a medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile derived from the US AIM-7 Sparrow missile and carried by Royal Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms and Tornado F3s, Italian ''Aeronautica Militare'' and Royal Saudi Air Force Tornados and Swedish ''Flygvapnet'' Saab Viggens. Skyflash replaced the original Raytheon conical scanning seeker with a Marconi inverse monopulse seeker that worked with the F-4's radar. Monopulse seekers are more accurate, less susceptible to jamming, and able to easily pick out targets at low altitudes. It offered significantly better performance than the original seeker, allowing British Aerospace to dispense with upgrades to the warhead that were carried out in the US to address poor accuracy. Skyflash was tested in the US, but after trials against experimental monopulse seekers from Raytheon, the United States Navy elected to order a different monopulse-equipped version of the S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AIM-7 Sparrow
The AIM-7 Sparrow (Air Intercept Missile) is an American medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile operated by the United States Air Force, United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and various other air forces and navies. Sparrow and its derivatives were the West's principal beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air missile from the late 1950s until the 1990s. It remains in service, although it is being phased out in aviation applications in favor of the more advanced AIM-120 AMRAAM. The early Sparrow was intended primarily for use against larger targets, especially bombers, and had numerous operational limitations in other uses. Against smaller targets, the need to receive a strong reflected radar signal made it difficult to achieve lock-on at the missile's effective range. As the launching aircraft's own radar needed to be pointed at the target throughout the engagement, this meant that in fighter-vs-fighter combat the enemy fighter would often approach within ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II In UK Service
The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II was one of the principal combat aircraft of the United Kingdom (UK) from 1968 to 1992. The UK was the first export customer for the US-built F-4 Phantom, which was ordered amid political and economic difficulties that afflicted British designs for similar aircraft. The Phantom was procured to fill several roles with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Air Force (RAF), including air defence, close air support, low-level attack and tactical reconnaissance. Most Phantoms operated by the UK were built as a special batch containing British technology, an effort to support the British aerospace industry after major project cancellations. Two variants were initially built for the UK: the F-4K variant, designed from the outset as an air-defence interceptor to be operated by the Fleet Air Arm from the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers; and the F-4M version, operated by the RAF in tactical strike and reconnaissance roles. In the mid-1980s, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panavia Tornado ADV
The Panavia Tornado Air Defence Variant (ADV) is a long-range, twin-engine swing-wing interceptor aircraft developed by the European Panavia Aircraft GmbH consortium. It was a specialised derivative of the multirole Panavia Tornado. Development of the Tornado ADV formally commenced in 1976. It was primarily intended to intercept Soviet bombers as they were traversing across the North Sea with the aim of preventing a successful air-launched nuclear attack against the United Kingdom. In this capacity, it was equipped with a powerful radar and beyond-visual-range missiles. Having been based on the multinational Tornado IDS, development was relatively quick. Originally, the programme was solely pursued by the United Kingdom. The first prototype performed its maiden flight on 27 October 1979; two further prototypes followed in the year after. The initial production model, the ''Tornado F2'', entered service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1986. The Tornado F2, which was only pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saab 37 Viggen
The Saab 37 Viggen (''The Tufted Duck'', ambiguous with ''The Thunderbolt'') is a single-seat, single-engine multirole combat aircraft designed and produced by the Swedish aircraft manufacturer Saab AB, Saab. It was the first Canard (aeronautics), canard-equipped aircraft to be produced in quantityFredriksen 2001, p. 279. and the first to carry an airborne Computer#Digital computers, digital central computer with integrated circuits for its avionics, arguably making it the most modern/advanced combat aircraft in Europe at the time of introduction. The digital central computer was the first of its kind in the world, automating and taking over tasks previously requiring a navigator/copilot, facilitating handling in tactical situations where, among other things, high speeds and short decision times determined whether attacks would be successful or not, a system not surpassed until the introduction of the Panavia Tornado into operational service in 1981. Development work begun durin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inverse Monopulse Seeker
An inverse monopulse seeker is a type of semi-active radar homing that offers significant advantages over earlier designs. The system requires electronics that can compare three signals at once, so this design did not become practically possible until the early 1970s. One of the first such examples was the Soviet Union R-40 air-to-air missiles used in MiG-25P introduced in service in 1970 and RAF's Skyflash missile introduced in 1978, an adaptation of the AIM-7 Sparrow that replaced the original Raytheon seeker with a monopulse model from Marconi, followed by a very similar conversion by Selenia for the Italian Aspide. The USAF adopted similar technology in the M model of the AIM-7 Sparrow, and such designs are universal in semi-active designs today. Concept Conical scanning In order to home in on a target, a semi-active seeker relies on the reflection of radar signals being provided by the launching aircraft. One can visualize such a signal as a cone-shaped reflection off t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AMRAAM
The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) ( ) is an American beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. It uses active transmit-receive radar guidance instead of semi-active receive-only radar guidance. When an AMRAAM missile is launched, NATO pilots use the brevity code " Fox Three". The AMRAAM largely replaced the AIM-7 Sparrow as the principal beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile in U.S. inventory. more than 14,000 had been produced for the United States Air Force, the United States Navy, and 33 international customers. The AMRAAM has been used in several engagements, achieving 16 air-to-air kills in conflicts over Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, India, and Syria. In the long term, it is expected to eventually be replaced by the long range AIM-260 JATM in U.S. service and the MBDA Meteor in some European countries. Origins AIM-7 Sparrow MRM The AIM-7 Sparrow medium range missile (MRM) was purchased by the US Navy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Air-to-air Missile
An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft (including unmanned aircraft such as cruise missiles). AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid-fuel rocket, solid fueled but sometimes liquid-fuel rocket, liquid fueled. Ramjet engines, as used on the Meteor (missile), Meteor, are emerging as propulsion that will enable future medium- to long-range missiles to maintain higher average speed across their engagement envelope. Air-to-air missiles are broadly put in two groups. Those designed to engage opposing aircraft at ranges of around 30 km to 40 km maximum are known as short-range or "within visual range" missiles (SRAAMs or WVRAAMs) and are sometimes called "dogfight" missiles because they are designed to optimize their agility rather than range. Most use infrared guidance and are called heat-seeking missiles. In contrast, medium- or long-range missiles (MRAAMs or LRAAMs), which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bristol Aerojet
Bristol Aerojet (BAJ) was a joint venture between the Bristol Aeroplane Company of the United Kingdom and Aerojet General of the US begun in 1959 using the existing factory at Banwell near Weston super Mare, England. History Banwell aircraft factory 1941-59 Built in 1941 under the authority of the Minister of Aircraft Production, the works was operated by the Bristol Aeroplane Company to build and repair Bristol Beaufort and Bristol Beaufighter torpedo fighter-bombers and Hawker Tempest fighters. After the war the company used the works to build pre-fab houses and schools until the mid-fifties, and then to manufacture rocket-motors required by the Cold War. Bristol/Aerojet technical collaboration Discussions with Aerojet of California USA took place aimed at exploiting the varied rocket-making skills of the two companies, and in 1959 the Banwell works became Bristol Aerojet (BAJ), with a board chaired by Sir Reginald Verdon-Smith of Bristol Aeroplane Company, with Dan Kimball ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semi-active Radar Homing
Semi-active radar homing (SARH) is a common type of missile guidance system, perhaps the most common type for longer-range air-to-air and surface-to-air missile systems. The name refers to the fact that the missile itself is only a passive detector of a radar signal—provided by an external source via radar illumination—as it reflects off the target (in contrast to active radar homing, which uses an active radar transceiver). Semi-active missile systems use bistatic continuous-wave radar. The NATO brevity code for a semi-active radar homing missile launch is Fox One. Concept The basic concept of SARH is that since almost all detection and tracking systems consist of a radar system, duplicating this hardware on the missile itself is redundant. The weight of a transmitter reduces the range of any flying object, so passive systems have greater reach. In addition, the resolution of a radar is strongly related to the physical size of the antenna, and in the small nose cone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BAe Dynamics
British Aerospace Dynamics Limited (BADL or BAe Dynamics) was a division of British Aerospace. History British Aerospace was created in April 1977 by the merger of the British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley Aviation, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics and Scottish Aviation. Formation There were two companies in the formation: * BAC (Guided Weapons) * Hawker Siddeley Dynamics The missile, weapon systems and space businesses of these companies were merged into British Aerospace Dynamics Limited (BADL), a wholly owned subsidiary of BAe. In December 1979, Euromissile Dynamics Group was formed with Aérospatiale of Toulouse, France and MBB of Ottobrunn. Subsidiary company On 1 January 1992, British Aerospace Defence Ltd began trading as a wholly owned subsidiary of BAe. Previously separate defence companies now operated as divisions of that subsidiary: * British Aerospace (Dynamics) Ltd * British Aerospace (Military Aircraft) Ltd, * Royal Ordnance plc * British Aerospace Sys ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Aerospace
British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft manufacturer, aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer that was formed in 1977. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. It purchased Marconi Electronic Systems, the defence electronics and naval shipbuilding subsidiary of the General Electric Company, in 1999 to form BAE Systems. History Formation and privatisation The company has its origins in the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act 1977, which called for the nationalisation and merger of the British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley Aviation, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics and Scottish Aviation. On 29 April 1977, the new entity was formed in the United Kingdom as a statutory corporation. Under the provisions of the British Aerospace Act 1980 (c. 26), on 1 January the statutory corporation was transferred to a limited company, which then re-registered as a public limited company (plc), under the nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
