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Head-on Engagement
In military aviation, a head-on engagement is one where a surface-to-air missile system or jet aircraft engages another aircraft while the target aircraft is flying towards the attacker. This makes engagement with infrared homing missiles more difficult because the hot engine exhaust nozzle(s) of the target are pointing away from the attacker. Typically only all-aspect infra-red homing missiles are able to perform head-on engagements. Radar-guided missiles are typically able, however head-on many aircraft have a much smaller radar cross-section so the radar may not be able to track/lock onto the target at maximum range in this type of engagement. Missiles typically have a lower chance of hitting a target in a head-on engagement because of the very fast closure rate. If the missile is travelling at Mach 2.5 and the aircraft at Mach 1, the combined rate of Mach 3.5 doesn't give the missile very much time to respond to violent evasive maneuvers the aircraft might perform or to rec ...
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Military Aviation
Military aviation is the design, development and use of military aircraft and other flying machines for the purposes of conducting or enabling aerial warfare, including national airlift (air cargo) capacity to provide military logistics, logistical supply to forces stationed in a Theater (warfare), war theater or along a Front (military), front. Airpower includes the national means of conducting such warfare, including the intersection of transport and warcraft. Military aircraft include bombers, fighter aircraft, fighters, Military transport aircraft, transports, trainer aircraft, and reconnaissance aircraft. History The first military uses of aviation involved lighter-than-air balloons. During the Battle of Fleurus (1794), Battle of Fleurus in 1794, the French observation balloon ''l'Entreprenant'' was used to monitor Austrian troop movements. The use of lighter-than-air aircraft in warfare became prevalent in the 19th century, including regular use in the American Civil W ...
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Surface-to-air Missile
A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground or the sea to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft warfare, anti-aircraft system; in modern armed forces, missiles have replaced most other forms of dedicated anti-aircraft weapons, with anti-aircraft guns pushed into specialized roles. The first attempt at SAM development took place during World War II, but no operational systems were introduced. Further development in the 1940s and 1950s led to operational systems being introduced by most major forces during the second half of the 1950s. Smaller systems, suitable for close-range work, evolved through the 1960s and 1970s, to modern systems that are man-portable. Shipborne systems followed the evolution of land-based models, starting with long-range weapons and steadily evolving toward smaller designs to provide a layered defence. T ...
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Jet Aircraft
A jet aircraft (or simply jet) is an aircraft (nearly always a fixed-wing aircraft) propelled by one or more jet engines. Whereas the engines in Propeller (aircraft), propeller-powered aircraft generally achieve their maximum efficiency at much lower speeds and altitudes, jet engines achieve maximum efficiency at speeds close to or even well above the speed of sound. Jet aircraft generally cruise most efficiently at about Mach number, Mach 0.8 () and at altitudes around or more. The idea of the jet engine was not new, but the technical problems involved did not begin to be solved until the 1930s. Frank Whittle, an English people, English inventor and RAF officer, began development of a viable jet engine in 1928, and Hans von Ohain in Germany began work independently in the early 1930s. In August 1939 the turbojet powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft, made its first flight. A wide range of different types of jet aircraft exist, both for civilian and military pu ...
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Infrared Homing
Infrared homing is a Missile guidance#Passive homing, passive weapon guidance system which uses the infrared (IR) light emission from a target to track and follow it seamlessly. Missiles which use infrared seeking are often referred to as "heat-seekers" since infrared is radiated strongly by hot bodies. Many objects such as people, vehicle engines and aircraft generate and emit heat and so are especially visible in the infrared wavelengths of light compared to objects in the background. Infrared seekers are passive devices, which, unlike radar, provide no indication that they are tracking a target. That makes them suitable for sneak attacks during visual encounters or over longer ranges when they are used with a forward looking infrared or similar cueing system. Heat-seekers are extremely effective: 90% of all timeline of United States military operations, United States air combat losses between 1984 and 2009 were caused by infrared-homing missiles. They are, however, subject ...
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All-aspect
An all-aspect air-to-air missile can track a target no matter which way the target faces relative to the missile. In other words, an all-aspect missile can be launched against a target not only in a tail-chase engagement, but also in a head-on engagement, in a side-on engagement, from above, from below, etc. This is opposed to older infrared homing rear aspect missiles which were only able to track the hot engine exhaust of an aircraft if the aircraft's engine exhaust was pointing towards the missile seeker, and thus were only successfully used in tail-chase engagements. Examples include the US AIM-9 Sidewinder (AIM-9L and later), the Russian Vympel R-73 and the Israeli Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. () is an Israeli Defense contractor, defense technology company. It was founded as Israel's National R&D Defense Laboratory for the development of weapons and military technology within the Ministry of Defens ... Python 5 air-air/ground-air ...
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Infra-red Homing
Infrared homing is a passive weapon guidance system which uses the infrared (IR) light emission from a target to track and follow it seamlessly. Missiles which use infrared seeking are often referred to as "heat-seekers" since infrared is radiated strongly by hot bodies. Many objects such as people, vehicle engines and aircraft generate and emit heat and so are especially visible in the infrared wavelengths of light compared to objects in the background. Infrared seekers are passive devices, which, unlike radar, provide no indication that they are tracking a target. That makes them suitable for sneak attacks during visual encounters or over longer ranges when they are used with a forward looking infrared or similar cueing system. Heat-seekers are extremely effective: 90% of all United States air combat losses between 1984 and 2009 were caused by infrared-homing missiles. They are, however, subject to a number of simple countermeasures, most notably by dropping flares behin ...
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Missile
A missile is an airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight aided usually by a propellant, jet engine or rocket motor. Historically, 'missile' referred to any projectile that is thrown, shot or propelled towards a target; this usage is still recognized today with any unguided jet- or rocket-propelled weapons generally described as rocket artillery. Airborne explosive devices without propulsion are referred to as shells if fired by an artillery piece and bombs if dropped by an aircraft. Missiles are also generally guided towards specific targets termed as guided missiles or guided rockets. Missile systems usually have five system components: targeting, guidance system, flight system, engine, and warhead. Missiles are primarily classified into different types based on firing source and target such as surface-to-surface, air-to-surface, surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles. Terminology Missile is derived from Latin "missilis" meaning "that may be ...
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Radar Cross-section
Radar cross-section (RCS), denoted σ, also called radar signature, is a measure of how detectable an object is by radar. A larger RCS indicates that an object is more easily detected. An object reflects a limited amount of radar energy back to the source. The factors that influence this include: *the material with which the target is made; *the size of the target relative to the wavelength of the illuminating radar signal; *the absolute size of the target; *the incident angle (angle at which the radar beam hits a particular portion of the target, which depends upon the shape of the target and its orientation to the radar source); *the reflected angle (angle at which the reflected beam leaves the part of the target hit; it depends upon incident angle); *the polarization of the radiation transmitted and received with respect to the orientation of the target. While important in detecting targets, strength of emitter and distance are not factors that affect the calculation o ...
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Mach Number
The Mach number (M or Ma), often only Mach, (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. \mathrm = \frac, where: * is the local Mach number, * is the local flow velocity with respect to the boundaries (either internal, such as an object immersed in the flow, or external, like a channel), and * is the speed of sound in the medium, which in air varies with the square root of the thermodynamic temperature. By definition, at Mach1, the local flow velocity is equal to the speed of sound. At Mach0.65, is 65% of the speed of sound (subsonic), and, at Mach1.35, is 35% faster than the speed of sound (supersonic). The local speed of sound, and hence the Mach number, depends on the temperature of the surrounding gas. The Mach number is primarily used to determine the approximation with which a flow can be treated as an i ...
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Autocannon
An autocannon, automatic cannon or machine cannon is a automatic firearm, fully automatic gun that is capable of rapid-firing large-caliber ( or more) armour-piercing, explosive or incendiary ammunition, incendiary shell (projectile), shells, as opposed to the smaller-caliber kinetic projectiles (bullets) fired by a machine gun. Autocannons have a longer effective range and greater terminal ballistics, terminal performance than machine guns, due to the use of larger/heavier munitions (most often in the range of , but bigger calibers also exist), but are usually smaller than tank guns, howitzers, field guns, or other artillery. When used on its own, the word "autocannon" typically indicates a non-rotary weapon with a single gun barrel, barrel. When multiple rotating barrels are involved, such a weapon is referred to as a "rotary autocannon" or "rotary cannon". If it uses a single barrel with a rotating cylinder with multiple chambers, it is known as a "revolver autocannon" or ...
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Missiles
A missile is an airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight aided usually by a propellant, jet engine or rocket motor. Historically, 'missile' referred to any projectile that is thrown, shot or propelled towards a target; this usage is still recognized today with any unguided jet- or rocket-propelled weapons generally described as rocket artillery. Airborne explosive devices without propulsion are referred to as shells if fired by an artillery piece and bombs if dropped by an aircraft. Missiles are also generally guided towards specific targets termed as guided missiles or guided rockets. Missile systems usually have five system components: targeting, guidance system, flight system, engine, and warhead. Missiles are primarily classified into different types based on firing source and target such as surface-to-surface, air-to-surface, surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles. Terminology Missile is derived from Latin "missilis" meaning "that may be thro ...
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Tail-chase Engagement
A tail-chase engagement (or rear-aspect engagement) is one where a surface-to-air missile system or jet aircraft engages another aircraft while the target aircraft is flying away from the attacker. This makes engagement with cannons or infrared homing missiles easier because of the minimal lateral target movement relative to the attacker and the fact that the hot engine exhaust nozzle(s) are pointing directly at the attacker, making the infra-red seeker's task of tracking the target much easier. Missiles typically have a very high chance of hitting a target in a tail-chase engagement because of the much reduced closure rate. If the missile is travelling at Mach 2.5 and the aircraft at Mach 1, the combined overtake rate of Mach 1.5 means that the missile should be easily able to respond to any evasive maneuvers the aircraft might perform. Missiles can typically maneuver faster than aircraft and in a tail-chase engagement the target has no real advantage over the missile. Its only r ...
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