Why did the F-15, a plane with a big radar meant to outmatch anything flying in the foreseeable future, enter service with SARH sparrows while the Navy's attempt at approximately the same thing enter service with a proper active homing AAM?
>>64213504>asking for logic behind US military procurement Lol. Lmao.
>>64213504Because the AIM-7 was standard equipment with both USN and USAF at the time. The long-range missile interceptor mission was not part of F-15's spec (as it was for the Navy F-111B and its successor, F-14)The USN AIM-54 Phoenix missile itself was a design evolution of the Hughes AIM-47 Falcon which was supposed to arm the USAF's triple-sonic heavy interceptor YF-12A, that ended up being cancelled.These were the air-to-air missile systems in development right around the late 1960s genesis of the F-15 and F-14 projects.The original Navy long range "missile truck" air-to-air interceptor project from 1958, out of which the AWG-9 multi-track-while-scan radar system developed, was the Douglas F6D Missileer airplane and the Bendix AAM-N-10 Eagle missile which was to have a 160 nm range. Neither of those systems came to fruition and the Navy later in the 1960s went with the F-111B (and finally the F-14)
>>64213504don't know for sure but I'm willing to bet that the AIM-54 doesn't do so well over land with higher background clutter
>>64214329>Background clutter at high altitude
>>64214334>equips the premier overland air superiority fighter with missiles that can only kill targets flying at high altitude
>>64214288nerd
>>64213504The F-15, will never be the F-4 of the 21st Century no matter how much you bastards upgrade it or try to meme it to be so
>>64214336doesn't it have datalink to use the fighters radar? and you can still carry ir missiles and a sparrow or two
>>64214329>don't know for sure but I'm willing to bet that the AIM-54 doesn't do so well over land with higher background clutterIt did well over Iran and Iraq in Iranian service.
>>64214341no uNow tell me about this missile.
>>64214355>use the fighters radar?OP is bitching about the missile doing exactly that>you can still carry ir missilesthey don't do well at long range>and a sparrowagain, OP is bitching about doing exactly that>>64214372>in Iranian serviceperhapsbut who knows under what engagement parameters?even if you ask them, how do you know they're telling the truth?that's why nobody bothers "studying" the Iran-Iraq war, or the recent Pakistani-Indian clashall information collected is so dubious, it's impossible to come to any proper conclusionmaybe I'm wrong, maybe it does work fine; but I wouldn't accept an Iranian's word on that, that's all
