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Just FYI Simon, we call them aim (just like the word) not a-i-m, and for some reason we don't use the phonetic alphabet for the model, we just use the letter name. (AIM-9 L, not AIM-9 lima.) It's the same for all AIM variants. :) Also, they are called sidewinder because of the way they S-curve through the air to their target just like the snakes.
How sensitive is the Sidewinder Infrared seeker? Back in the late 1970's while getting a tour or an F-4 Phantom that had Sidewinders loaded up, our group noticed to our surprise that the seeker head was gimballing and moving, obviously tracking. . .something. Looking for what it was targeting, we eventually noticed a guy walking on the edge of the flight line, about 300 feet away. . .smoking a cigarette. And yep. the seeker was detecting it. So remember kids, smoking can be really dangerous.
Holy crap! I just realized... That scene in the movie XXX where Vin Diesel's character fired a heat-seeking rocket at a chain smoking sniper is actually plausible? I mean that's definitely not a sidewinder but if the seeker is based on the same tech...
One of the (many) reasons we never smoked after sunset while being in a tactical environment with the Infantry. The biggest reason is how far away the cherry in a cigarette can be seen at night. That being said, in Chuck Yeager’s autobiography, he told an amusing anecdote about being involved with testing the first heat seeking missiles. When they fired them, they headed straight towards the sun. 😂
The current version can detect the temperature differential between the leading edge of the wing and the main wing itself. No tailpipe view required. The seeker head is cryogenically cooled to give it that degree of sensitivity.
Those bricks with a pipe will continue serving with the US military for another century. The Space Force is going to set up a Mars base in 2045 and bring M2s used in 1945 with them.
An electrical engineering professor I had in college worked for Ratheon at one point and worked on missile technology. He couldn't tell us much as most of it is classified, but I recall him telling me that when a target aircraft pulls a 9-G turn the missile fired at it would need to be able to pull up to 30-G to stay on target and catch it. THIRTY G's! Imagine the materials science that went into the body and aerodynamic surfaces of that missile! Amazing stuff.
@@jeramysteve3394 Human bodies can handle 50G as demonstrated by USAF tests. The problem is staying conscious - a G-Suit makes this possible to 12 to 14G.
The sidewinder missile had a problem of seeking out the sun instead of the heat signature of an enemy jet. This problem was solved at a lab at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
Really? I’m not a fighter pilot, obviously, but I do play sims a good bit and firing a missile while facing the sun is a big no no even with modern missiles. Ik games aren’t real life, but they do use the most reliable public info available.
There's a museum at China Lake that has the seeker assemblies of all the generations of the AIM-9 on display, among many other weapons developed at China Lake over the years. It used to be on base and not open to the public without an escort, but has since been moved off base so anybody can visit it in Ridgecrest. If you're on your way to Death Valley from SoCal, it's worth stopping off in Ridgecrest to check it out...just be careful of the sidewinder rattlesnakes.
I worked on Sidewinder..and Mavericks, Phoenix, (oh, and Trident).. my little Sister wouldn't set at the Thanksgiving table with me, and she often put miniature protest signs around where ever we were together..
The Nuclear Falcon and the Genie are examples of nuclear air-to-air missiles. The idea is to increase kill radius. And at least in the Genie's case, the hope was to knock out whole formations of enemy bombers. This was WW2 thinking, of course, since in the Nuclear Age bombers generally go singly on missions.
It was to ensure you would score a kill, since missing meant a bomber would get through to nuke your cities, and early air to air missile tech was not considered reliable enough to bet on.
@@thomasstuart2936 Actually, on a technicality of what constitutes a missile, the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshuma was the first nuclear missile. This is in much the same way that a molotov cocktail thrown in a riot is considered to be a missile. It was however the first rocket-powered air-to-air mssile with a nuclear warhead.
Correction at 9:59, Navy Phantoms never used guns or gun pods operationally, they just got better sidewinders and radars for the sparrows. It was the USAF that started using guns on the Phantoms.
I would guess that a nuclear-tipped Sidewinder would be intended for continental defense against bombers, in which case using small nukes on aircraft is totally NOT overkill, since those bombers are on their way to flatten your cities and you are already in a full scale nuclear war by that point.
To expand on what Titanium rain said. It was never about blowing mass formations of bombers out of the sky. We could determine from their tests what materials they used to make their bombs. The belief was an air burst close enough to the bombers would bathe the nukes in bombarding neutrons. It didn't make them not radioactive, it didn't render the chemical explosives used to compress everything and start the chain. BUT it would have kept our coasts from turning into glass.
This was a response to the Nike missile program (a ground radar guided system for intercepting bombers) The Nike in testing had increasing difficulty in getting close enough and providing a big enough blast to be effective.
Suggestion: So when will Simon cover the A-10 Warthog? I'd say it's development, at least, deserves a Side Projects vid. How often is a plane literally built around a Gatling gun? XD
@@eazamar9 Yeah, and a lot are good, too. But none are from Simon Whistler, and if he's willing, I'm putting forth the idea. ^_^ I just enjoy his style of presentation.
My grandpa retired from Raytheon in the early 90s, and from what he told me, he worked on this, the phoenix, and Sparrow programs. Super happy you finally covered this!
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't. In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was. The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.
Goddamn right! My calculations deduced the same result!!! I also theorized that the addition of 25 ball 1/8 diameter ball bearings into the standard claymore anti-personnel mine adds 13 to the 9th power of killing surface up to 60 meters...
As usual Simon I loved this video. Keep them coming. However, as a former air weapons technician in the Royal Navy working on FA-2 Sea Harriers, I found it odd that apparently only RAF pilots shit down Argentinian aircraft. I think the boys from 800NAS might feel a bit left out.
I have actually read the book by Sharkey Ward, on the Sea Harrier and the Falklands war. Some of the things he wrote about , especially the Admiralty censuring his after action report, removing pages in it where he was critical of the tasking and of the higher ups.
Back around 1968 I was working on my BSEE at UMASS Lowell and managed to snag a part time job at the nearby Raytheon facility. My job was final test and calibration of the Sidewinder heat seeker and guidance assembly. It was a cool part time job for a college student at union wages - much better than flipping hamburgers. Thanks, Raytheon.
2:35 chapter one development 5:11chapter two specification 6:30 chapter three Taiwan 8:44 chapter four Vietnam war 10:02 chapter five Variants 13:26Still going strong
You might want to check out the B29 crash into lake Mead Nevada whilst conducting early tests on the seeker head, basically the pilots had to rag the aircraft around and try to get the seeker head to lose its target (the sun), unfortunately one crew took there duties too far and the aircraft ended up at the bottom of the lake.
Did a report on the Aim 9 for my English class in high-school. I probably bored everyone to tears when I read it aloud. Wasn't quite a Simon Whistler when it came to that stuff.
Hey Simon! One of the variants on the sidewinder, the AIM-9 E was the next step after the B with an un-caged seeker head. Meaning it could lead the target better than the B model
Well, sadly, one of the keys to war is to do things that are so devastating that your opponents don't want to continue the fight. So Overkill is inherent in weapons design
I'm surprised that Simon didn't mention the AIM-9C which was the only radar-guided version (Surviving AIM-9Cs were converted in the 1980s into AGM-122A anti-radiation missiles to equip attack helicopters) and the Soviets developed radar-guided versions of the AA-2 Atoll Sidewinder clone.
Interestingly, that Soviet/Russian Sidewinder clone is based *directly* off of knowledge gained from studying and reverse engineering a captured Sidewinder missile, one that hit its target but failed to explode. This is according to a relative who also used to work for Raytheon. That relative claims that the captured Sidewinder helped advance Soviet missile technology by *years* , if not longer. At the time, the Sidewinder's IR sensor was *very* new and *highly* advanced.
Father in law worked at China lake in 70s. One of the many engineers that worked on the variants. The museum is very interesting and includes an original fat boy . They only had enough material for 2 bombs but made a number of units.
What Simon didn't mention describing combat with cannon and machine-guns is that pilots also had to judge /deflection/ - where the target would be when the bullets / shells - and to a lesser degree rockets as they were more often used in slower moving ground based targets - reached it, not where it /was/ when they opened fire. Using missiles negated judging deflection, especially 'Fire and Forget' types.
"Even by American standards.... overkill". Ha! That is hilarious! I don't doubt that the Sidewinder will reach the centennial mark. With what concept can it be replaced? The heat-seeker will always be an option.
still being made! Dec, 2021, Many many improvements over 50 years of continuous production, now longer range and faster versions being tested. Remember one shot at the range nearly forty years ago, it got the target with a nearly ninety degree lock off.
Any viewers here with direct connections to the (RIP)Newport Beach Philco Ford/Ford Aeronutronic/Ford Aerospace and Communications Plant? If so, you too may remember the joys of tracking flights out of John Wayne Airport in a mock surface to air turret with four mock sidewinders on it. "Open House" was always a good time.
I suspect part of the sidewinder's staying power is that it would take a radical shift in technology for a single new missile that didn't cost many times that of a sidewinder to have a kill rate better than 2 sidewinders. Generally I think the pilots would rather have a slightly less effective missile with the option for another try. I'm not sure if you can miniaturise a nuclear warhead sufficiently enough to have a low enough yield to be useful in a dogfight. You'd probably have to lock onto your target then reduce speed to increase to a safe enough distance to fire, you'd also have to be extremely careful to avoid catching friendlies, and assuming all your electronics are hardened against EMP, the detonation would still likely blind all your instruments.
Stealth craft have some inherent EMP resistances and there are fissile materials with critical masses in the gram range so definitely able to be made small enough with significant yield. Edit: still a terrible idea, anything that moves nuclear weapons use closer to being "acceptable" on the theatre scale is bad for MAD stability.
Simon not sure if you see this though, the videos of your various channels largely are universally appreciated throughout, and I am glad in confidence tp enjoy binging hours at a time :>
Thrust-vectoring has been an operational technology for decades. I hope ensuing developments include self-defense of essential airborne command and control platforms.
Not having much experience or knowledge about American fighters or military aircraft in general, what are the black squares shown on the F-35’s that have the white circles on them? They somewhat remind me of the little stickers you put over the holes in paper targets down on the range, and make me think of “these are the holes made in my hull that I’ve survived through”
The Diamondback missile may have had the same reasoning as something like the Genie missile, that being a single missile could take out an entire formation of enemy planes
Sidewinder:"I crave the forbidden heat signature..." not sidewinder:"The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation."
The name "Sidewinder" derives from the flight path the missile took during testing. The characteristics of said rattlesnake sealed the deal. Also, the F-86 Saber is equipped with six machine guns, not cannons. The USAF used cannon-armed F-4s over North Vietnam; Cs and Ds flew belly mounted gun pods, Es had internal nose-mounted cannons. Not sure how much they are today, but 20 years ago an AIM-9 might cost $90,000.
I remember reading that during the first Gulf War (early 1991) A-10 pilots were using the targeting systems of their Sidewinder missiles as rudimentary infrared imaging devices when flying at night. They'd activate the targeting system of a wing-mounted Sidewinder and use its infrared sensor to locate tanks and other large heat sources on the ground. It wasn't good enough for targeting necessarily but it got them close enough that by using other systems they were able to engage the target. Pretty sure that after that war the Air Force wasted very little time getting their Warthog pilots some genuine thermal imaging gear to use for this purpose and now of course the idea that a running vehicle can hide in the dark is a quaint and antiquated one. Anyone who has ever used or seen thermal imaging optics knows that such things are easier to find in pitch-dark at night than during broad daylight with the naked eye. And now of course thermal imaging has gotten so good at distinguishing and imaging slight differences in temperature that they work almost as well in the heat of the day as they do at night, which is something that would have amazed a soldier or pilot a decade or two ago.
Mavericks….. not sidewinders. The 1 single time an A10 attempted to actually use an AIM9-M it wouldn’t lock and they wound up shooting down a helicopter with the gun.
@@jh52663 Where you say 'use' you actually mean 'attempt to launch'. A-10 pilots did indeed use the Sidewinders IR seeker to locate targets which were then prosecuted with other munitions, from bombs to Berty the Avenger.
ATOLL was the NATO code name for the Soviet missile. There's also an account of a Sidewinder being stolen from a NATO airbase and carried across the Iron Curtain in the back of a Volkswagen beetle, suitably wrapped, of course... A common tactic to spoof the early missiles was to fly directly at the sun, causing the seekers to break lock. Those same early models were reported to go after ground vehicles; I once read that there was even consideration for using them against trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" isn't the real saying. The full proverb is "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery from the incompetent".
The sidewinder In it’s first iteration had problems in the beginning such as fouling up in the rail and fog & locking up to foreign heat sources like the sun and tropical ground cough cough Vietnam and this was due to sidewinder having infra red unlike the sparrow which had radar which itself needs tracked to the target by the phantom’s weapon systems operator better known as wizzo. And the sidewinder had a distinctive lock on growl.
Always been a sucker for aviation, topics and TOYS on top of many others! 🤣 Side or Megaprojects alike! what specific vehicle ✈🛩 is going to come next? - Surprise me, there are many more!
aim-9 scary story...waiting for one of our hornets to land...catch the #3...but one sidewinder kept going skidding on the deck and off the angle. that was exciting!
Not sure the US Navy employed guns on their F-4 Phantoms that much. The USAF did employ 20 mm gun pods a lot more often on the F-4C/D models and then redesigning the nose in the F-4E to accommodate the 20 mm gun internally. The US Navy instead concentrated on better dissimilar air combat techniques (DACT) to get the best out of their planes and missiles which let to the Top Gun program.
My great grandfather worked on the heat seeking technology on the Sidewinder and some of her variants along with other secret weapons programs. At that time the base was called NOT (Naval Ordinance Testing) China Lake. I was born and raised (currently living) in the secret city. NAWS (Naval Air Weapons Station) China Lake is the largest weapons development and testing site in the world. There's a lot of desert out west. Simon you should do a video about NAWS China Lake and the early drone testing done here, I think you'll be surprised at what you find out about the place. Anyways back to the video I go. Thanks bow! this is going to be fun..
When have the RAF said that the Sidewinder was *not* a game changer? They've certainly tried to claim that the Sea Harrier was a game-changer (which is because of it's radar and AIM-9L), but never that the AIM-9 was not.
Imagine being one of those MiG pilots in that formation just be-bopping along when your wingman just disintegrates into an explosive fireball out of the blue without as much as a warning, and no enemy planes in sight. Wingman-“WHAT THE FU….?!?!?!” Flight leader-“What just happened to Bob?!?!” Wingman- “I don’t know sir, he just ……vaporized! But please alert my ground crew to meet me at my aircraft when we land with a handful of Valium, a shot of booze, and one of my clean flight suits as well as a fire truck to hose out my cockpit. It’s kinda messy right now!” 🤣🤣🤣
A nuclear tipped Aim 9 sidewinder is as hilariously OP as it is mortally dangerous. Imagine being in a stealth, F-35 Lightning II responding to some sort of rogue state, let's say Iran, and you accidentally select to fire the nuke tipped, Aim-9 diamondback heat-seeking missile instead of the normal Aim-9x sidewinder which is "only" +80% effective. All you had to do was quite literally look at the enemy F14-A, see Aim-9 and pull the trigger, and then the impact, is much, much brighter than it should be, be like "whoops, meant to send a normal one, instead I nuked you out of the sky, my bad"
Navy Phantoms never had internal guns in the Vietnam war. They had a centerline gun pod occasionally fitted. Toward the end of the war the USAF F-4E had a nose cannon. Prior to that the USAF also occasionally used the centerline gun pod.
Ahem... Navy pilots never relied on guns in their F-4's. Because they never got any. The USAF's F-4E variant got itself an internal gun and on Vietnam the USAF adopted the SUU-16 and SUU-23 gun pods with M61 cannons, and used them for air to air over North Vietnam in somewhat limited numbers, but with great success.
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The link to the related vid isn't in the description
You had me laughing on the bell! 😂😂🤣🤣😋🖤
Just FYI Simon, we call them aim (just like the word) not a-i-m, and for some reason we don't use the phonetic alphabet for the model, we just use the letter name. (AIM-9 L, not AIM-9 lima.) It's the same for all AIM variants. :) Also, they are called sidewinder because of the way they S-curve through the air to their target just like the snakes.
you missed out one very important part of the sidewinder..... the seeker tone
A missle that works sometimes, 40% at best changed warfare.
The stories of duds are horrible
How sensitive is the Sidewinder Infrared seeker? Back in the late 1970's while getting a tour or an F-4 Phantom that had Sidewinders loaded up, our group noticed to our surprise that the seeker head was gimballing and moving, obviously tracking. . .something. Looking for what it was targeting, we eventually noticed a guy walking on the edge of the flight line, about 300 feet away. . .smoking a cigarette. And yep. the seeker was detecting it. So remember kids, smoking can be really dangerous.
Yeah, having a sidewinder fly up your left nostril would certainly indicate that you were having a bad day.
I mean we are talking about something very close and not much colder than a jet engine with no afterburner.
Holy crap! I just realized... That scene in the movie XXX where Vin Diesel's character fired a heat-seeking rocket at a chain smoking sniper is actually plausible? I mean that's definitely not a sidewinder but if the seeker is based on the same tech...
One of the (many) reasons we never smoked after sunset while being in a tactical environment with the Infantry. The biggest reason is how far away the cherry in a cigarette can be seen at night. That being said, in Chuck Yeager’s autobiography, he told an amusing anecdote about being involved with testing the first heat seeking missiles. When they fired them, they headed straight towards the sun. 😂
The current version can detect the temperature differential between the leading edge of the wing and the main wing itself. No tailpipe view required. The seeker head is cryogenically cooled to give it that degree of sensitivity.
The M2 .50 general purpose heavy machinegun may be a good Side Project. One of those centenarian weapon systems.
Ma Dues! Whoop whoop!
And the M1911 pistol, still used in some Military units today J.M.B. was a god!
Those bricks with a pipe will continue serving with the US military for another century.
The Space Force is going to set up a Mars base in 2045 and bring M2s used in 1945 with them.
Whenever someone tells me that "you owe your military advancements to the Nazis", I point to the M2 machine gun as proof against this.
Biographics parts 1 & 2 , John M. Browning.
An electrical engineering professor I had in college worked for Ratheon at one point and worked on missile technology. He couldn't tell us much as most of it is classified, but I recall him telling me that when a target aircraft pulls a 9-G turn the missile fired at it would need to be able to pull up to 30-G to stay on target and catch it. THIRTY G's! Imagine the materials science that went into the body and aerodynamic surfaces of that missile! Amazing stuff.
And there's no way for aircraft to go past the 9g limit because of the human element.
@@jeramysteve3394 Wel above 9G is possible for the aircraft but it will be up to the pilot ti withstand the G-force.
@@jeramysteve3394 Human bodies can handle 50G as demonstrated by USAF tests. The problem is staying conscious - a G-Suit makes this possible to 12 to 14G.
Incredible.
@@Boomkokogamez basically what he said
The sidewinder missile had a problem of seeking out the sun instead of the heat signature of an enemy jet. This problem was solved at a lab at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
I'd love to know how they fixed that rather obvious problem of seeking after the hottest thing in the sky.
@@letsgobrandon416 ah well you see they probably didnt
Really? I’m not a fighter pilot, obviously, but I do play sims a good bit and firing a missile while facing the sun is a big no no even with modern missiles. Ik games aren’t real life, but they do use the most reliable public info available.
The forbidden heat signature.
Holy crap, Simon did a video I requested! Not sure if it was my request that got it made but I like to think so. Thanks a ton for this!
There's a museum at China Lake that has the seeker assemblies of all the generations of the AIM-9 on display, among many other weapons developed at China Lake over the years. It used to be on base and not open to the public without an escort, but has since been moved off base so anybody can visit it in Ridgecrest. If you're on your way to Death Valley from SoCal, it's worth stopping off in Ridgecrest to check it out...just be careful of the sidewinder rattlesnakes.
Whenever the algorithm recommends a Simon video, there’s a 1 in 3 chance it’s for a channel I didn’t even know he had.
I worked on Sidewinder..and Mavericks, Phoenix, (oh, and Trident)..
my little Sister wouldn't set at the Thanksgiving table with me,
and she often put miniature protest signs around
where ever we were together..
Just remember that she is able to protest because of the hard work people like you have done
My late FIL worked on the Sidewinder... And other projects...
She's protesting because of you and don't you forget that. Thank you for your hard work sir.
The Nuclear Falcon and the Genie are examples of nuclear air-to-air missiles. The idea is to increase kill radius. And at least in the Genie's case, the hope was to knock out whole formations of enemy bombers. This was WW2 thinking, of course, since in the Nuclear Age bombers generally go singly on missions.
It was to ensure you would score a kill, since missing meant a bomber would get through to nuke your cities, and early air to air missile tech was not considered reliable enough to bet on.
Ah! the Genie. The worlds first /UNGUIDED/ nuclear missile.
@@thomasstuart2936 Well, there was also the Davy Crockett at about that time... But it was never deployed, of course.
@@thomasstuart2936 Actually, on a technicality of what constitutes a missile, the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshuma was the first nuclear missile. This is in much the same way that a molotov cocktail thrown in a riot is considered to be a missile. It was however the first rocket-powered air-to-air mssile with a nuclear warhead.
This was a fantastic video on the sidewinder. Now I want a video on the hellfire.
Correction at 9:59, Navy Phantoms never used guns or gun pods operationally, they just got better sidewinders and radars for the sparrows. It was the USAF that started using guns on the Phantoms.
they had pods for ground attack. they had gun pods from the beginning. the air force got sold on a nose mounted one.
I would guess that a nuclear-tipped Sidewinder would be intended for continental defense against bombers, in which case using small nukes on aircraft is totally NOT overkill, since those bombers are on their way to flatten your cities and you are already in a full scale nuclear war by that point.
It was also estimated that the neutron emissions from the detonation could disable the nukes themselves.
One wonders why you'd need a guidance system if you're just going to make a 1km fireball...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie
My thought exactly.
To expand on what Titanium rain said. It was never about blowing mass formations of bombers out of the sky. We could determine from their tests what materials they used to make their bombs. The belief was an air burst close enough to the bombers would bathe the nukes in bombarding neutrons. It didn't make them not radioactive, it didn't render the chemical explosives used to compress everything and start the chain. BUT it would have kept our coasts from turning into glass.
This was a response to the Nike missile program (a ground radar guided system for intercepting bombers) The Nike in testing had increasing difficulty in getting close enough and providing a big enough blast to be effective.
Suggestion: So when will Simon cover the A-10 Warthog? I'd say it's development, at least, deserves a Side Projects vid. How often is a plane literally built around a Gatling gun? XD
Theres 1000 fucking videos of that plane in youtube . go watch one of those.
@@eazamar9 but A10 go BRRRRRRRRRT
@@eazamar9 Yeah, and a lot are good, too. But none are from Simon Whistler, and if he's willing, I'm putting forth the idea. ^_^ I just enjoy his style of presentation.
Can we get Danny to write it and Sam to do the memes?
@@eazamar9 yeah go watch other content rather than suggesting content you’d be interested in! Got em
My grandpa retired from Raytheon in the early 90s, and from what he told me, he worked on this, the phoenix, and Sparrow programs. Super happy you finally covered this!
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.
In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was.
The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.
I get it.
But does it have a turboencabulator?
I always imagine Thufir Hawat saying this.
An oldie but a goodie that still defies comprehension!
... and it's authentic!!!
Goddamn right! My calculations deduced the same result!!! I also theorized that the addition of 25 ball 1/8 diameter ball bearings into the standard claymore anti-personnel mine adds 13 to the 9th power of killing surface up to 60 meters...
Missile technology is always fascinating
As usual Simon I loved this video. Keep them coming.
However, as a former air weapons technician in the Royal Navy working on FA-2 Sea Harriers, I found it odd that apparently only RAF pilots shit down Argentinian aircraft. I think the boys from 800NAS might feel a bit left out.
I have actually read the book by Sharkey Ward, on the Sea Harrier and the Falklands war. Some of the things he wrote about , especially the Admiralty censuring his after action report, removing pages in it where he was critical of the tasking and of the higher ups.
Back around 1968 I was working on my BSEE at UMASS Lowell and managed to snag a part time job at the nearby Raytheon facility. My job was final test and calibration of the Sidewinder heat seeker and guidance assembly. It was a cool part time job for a college student at union wages - much better than flipping hamburgers. Thanks, Raytheon.
This channel, and all of your channels, are TH-cam gems. Thank you for all you do
Or just one beautiful stunning wife 😃
Wally Schirra of Mercury 8, Gemini 6, and Apollo 7 fame was the 1st pilot to fly with and deploy the Sidewinder Missile.
>Nuclear tipped sidewinders
I wish I loved anything even half as much as cold war US generals loved being insane.
2:35 chapter one development
5:11chapter two specification
6:30 chapter three Taiwan
8:44 chapter four Vietnam war
10:02 chapter five Variants
13:26Still going strong
the missile knows where it is at all times. it knows this because it knows where it isn't
You might want to check out the B29 crash into lake Mead Nevada whilst conducting early tests on the seeker head, basically the pilots had to rag the aircraft around and try to get the seeker head to lose its target (the sun), unfortunately one crew took there duties too far and the aircraft ended up at the bottom of the lake.
the missile knows where it is by subtracting where it is from where it isn't
I have an mp3 of that somewhere, although I am pretty it applies to the tomahawk not the sidewinder
Love you dude, thanks for all the great content to get us through these cold lonely nights
Did a report on the Aim 9 for my English class in high-school. I probably bored everyone to tears when I read it aloud. Wasn't quite a Simon Whistler when it came to that stuff.
Well, I did ask for videos on missiles (although I suggested harpoon and tomahawk😜), this is a good start. Well done, keep em comming!
Thank goodness for sponsor/ad block! Love the videos
Hey Simon! One of the variants on the sidewinder, the AIM-9 E was the next step after the B with an un-caged seeker head. Meaning it could lead the target better than the B model
It also had a vastly superior motor
Gotta remember Simon, in the eyes of the military, Overkill is Underrated!!
Well, sadly, one of the keys to war is to do things that are so devastating that your opponents don't want to continue the fight. So Overkill is inherent in weapons design
bonus point:
considering Soviet made MiG-21s over Vietnam were using K-13...
both sides used Sidewinders in that war!
I'm surprised that Simon didn't mention the AIM-9C which was the only radar-guided version (Surviving AIM-9Cs were converted in the 1980s into AGM-122A anti-radiation missiles to equip attack helicopters) and the Soviets developed radar-guided versions of the AA-2 Atoll Sidewinder clone.
Interestingly, that Soviet/Russian Sidewinder clone is based *directly* off of knowledge gained from studying and reverse engineering a captured Sidewinder missile, one that hit its target but failed to explode. This is according to a relative who also used to work for Raytheon. That relative claims that the captured Sidewinder helped advance Soviet missile technology by *years* , if not longer. At the time, the Sidewinder's IR sensor was *very* new and *highly* advanced.
@@vic5015 Did you even watch the video? Simon said that in the video...
@@jamielonsdale3018 ah, yes. So he did. I was never quite sure whether this relative was making up stories. Now I am.
Father in law worked at China lake in 70s. One of the many engineers that worked on the variants. The museum is very interesting and includes an original fat boy . They only had enough material for 2 bombs but made a number of units.
What Simon didn't mention describing combat with cannon and machine-guns is that pilots also had to judge /deflection/ - where the target would be when the bullets / shells - and to a lesser degree rockets as they were more often used in slower moving ground based targets - reached it, not where it /was/ when they opened fire. Using missiles negated judging deflection, especially 'Fire and Forget' types.
The AIM 9L Sidewinder probably tilted the air war in favor of the Brits in the Falklands War.
"Even by American standards.... overkill". Ha! That is hilarious!
I don't doubt that the Sidewinder will reach the centennial mark. With what concept can it be replaced? The heat-seeker will always be an option.
This was a really cool video. I was unaware that the sidewinder was developed and utilized in the '50s.
That part about the US’s use of guns in Vietnam is just plain wrong but mostly a good video.
Simon acknowledged Taiwan!? There goes all his social credit. John Xina is gonna be pissed
still being made! Dec, 2021, Many many improvements over 50 years of continuous production, now longer range and faster versions being tested. Remember one shot at the range nearly forty years ago, it got the target with a nearly ninety degree lock off.
Any viewers here with direct connections to the (RIP)Newport Beach Philco Ford/Ford Aeronutronic/Ford Aerospace and Communications Plant?
If so, you too may remember the joys of tracking flights out of John Wayne Airport in a mock surface to air turret with four mock sidewinders on it. "Open House" was always a good time.
Thank you I love your content
Ideas for videos... Proximity fuse in ww2, rocket sled test range thing, ford model T
I suspect part of the sidewinder's staying power is that it would take a radical shift in technology for a single new missile that didn't cost many times that of a sidewinder to have a kill rate better than 2 sidewinders. Generally I think the pilots would rather have a slightly less effective missile with the option for another try.
I'm not sure if you can miniaturise a nuclear warhead sufficiently enough to have a low enough yield to be useful in a dogfight. You'd probably have to lock onto your target then reduce speed to increase to a safe enough distance to fire, you'd also have to be extremely careful to avoid catching friendlies, and assuming all your electronics are hardened against EMP, the detonation would still likely blind all your instruments.
Stealth craft have some inherent EMP resistances and there are fissile materials with critical masses in the gram range so definitely able to be made small enough with significant yield. Edit: still a terrible idea, anything that moves nuclear weapons use closer to being "acceptable" on the theatre scale is bad for MAD stability.
Great video as always
The Navy doesnt have pilots. They have aviators.
Good video 👍
Von Braun wound up in Huntsville AL. There is a building named after him on the Arsenal.
REALLY, really good content Simon, ESP the past few vids!!! 😉👍✌️
the Diamondback would litterally let you turn a MIG into a mushroom cloud
Please do one on the SM series by Raytheon.
I always enjoy the military themed vids.
Nice episode thanks. By the end of WW2 the Nazis had also developed a TV guided air to ground missile, quite a few years before the Hellfire!
The double ding at 3:12 made me spit up my food laughing
2:00 "fast forward 2 decades to the skies over Taiwan where the sidewinder missile made its debut" What? I had no idea!
Simon not sure if you see this though, the videos of your various channels largely are universally appreciated throughout, and I am glad in confidence tp enjoy binging hours at a time :>
For the whole story in book form: Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake Paperback - Illustrated, August 15, 2013
Suggested topic for (maybe for MEGA PROJECTS) is Navy IVY BELL, BORESITE, and BULLS EYE and HOLYSTONE Operations. Reference RED NOVEMBER book
Thrust-vectoring has been an operational technology for decades. I hope ensuing developments include self-defense of essential airborne command and control platforms.
602 is also the area code for Phoenix, Arizona.
Not having much experience or knowledge about American fighters or military aircraft in general, what are the black squares shown on the F-35’s that have the white circles on them? They somewhat remind me of the little stickers you put over the holes in paper targets down on the range, and make me think of “these are the holes made in my hull that I’ve survived through”
Those were for testing. They provide reference points for tailing aircraft while the test aircraft is performing maneuvers or launching weapons.
The Diamondback missile may have had the same reasoning as something like the Genie missile, that being a single missile could take out an entire formation of enemy planes
Sidewinder:"I crave the forbidden heat signature..."
not sidewinder:"The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation."
Now do one about the Sidewinder's anti-radiation variant, the Sidearm.
Would you please make a video on the Grumman A6 Intruder ? It was, IMHO, the best attack aircraft that the Navy ever had. Thank you.
2:40 - Chapter 1 - Development
5:15 - Chapter 2 - Specifications
6:35 - Chapter 3 - Taiwan
8:50 - Chapter 4 - Vietnam war
10:05 - Chapter 5 - Variants
13:30 - Chapter 6 - Still going strong
Nah, there's 2 "Chapter Three"s lol
The name "Sidewinder" derives from the flight path the missile took during testing. The characteristics of said rattlesnake sealed the deal.
Also, the F-86 Saber is equipped with six machine guns, not cannons. The USAF used cannon-armed F-4s over North Vietnam; Cs and Ds flew belly mounted gun pods, Es had internal nose-mounted cannons.
Not sure how much they are today, but 20 years ago an AIM-9 might cost $90,000.
Navy F-4s were never upgraded like the E was. They used gunpods, but most of the time flew missile-only payloads.
@@dumdumbinks274, corrected.
13:25 I guess they've never heard of the AIR-2 Genie or the AIM-26 Falcon
Thank you
I remember reading that during the first Gulf War (early 1991) A-10 pilots were using the targeting systems of their Sidewinder missiles as rudimentary infrared imaging devices when flying at night. They'd activate the targeting system of a wing-mounted Sidewinder and use its infrared sensor to locate tanks and other large heat sources on the ground. It wasn't good enough for targeting necessarily but it got them close enough that by using other systems they were able to engage the target. Pretty sure that after that war the Air Force wasted very little time getting their Warthog pilots some genuine thermal imaging gear to use for this purpose and now of course the idea that a running vehicle can hide in the dark is a quaint and antiquated one. Anyone who has ever used or seen thermal imaging optics knows that such things are easier to find in pitch-dark at night than during broad daylight with the naked eye. And now of course thermal imaging has gotten so good at distinguishing and imaging slight differences in temperature that they work almost as well in the heat of the day as they do at night, which is something that would have amazed a soldier or pilot a decade or two ago.
Mavericks….. not sidewinders. The 1 single time an A10 attempted to actually use an AIM9-M it wouldn’t lock and they wound up shooting down a helicopter with the gun.
@@jh52663 Where you say 'use' you actually mean 'attempt to launch'. A-10 pilots did indeed use the Sidewinders IR seeker to locate targets which were then prosecuted with other munitions, from bombs to Berty the Avenger.
TYVM for this, it’s what Smarter Every Day was Trying to do but failed
ATOLL was the NATO code name for the Soviet missile. There's also an account of a Sidewinder being stolen from a NATO airbase and carried across the Iron Curtain in the back of a Volkswagen beetle, suitably wrapped, of course...
A common tactic to spoof the early missiles was to fly directly at the sun, causing the seekers to break lock. Those same early models were reported to go after ground vehicles; I once read that there was even consideration for using them against trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Some inaccuracies here but mostly a well made video.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" isn't the real saying. The full proverb is "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery from the incompetent".
Can you do a report on the Vietnam 2 conflict mentioned at 2:25 ?
Vietnam 2 is just the part that involved the US.
I worked on 2 different merchant ships with metal patches kinda near the stacks after being struck by (practice) sidewinders
Quick Simon! Merry Christmas to yourself! Gotta hit 10 channels by New Years!! 👍🏾👍🏾😂❤️❤️
He has 12 channels now
The sidewinder In it’s first iteration had problems in the beginning such as fouling up in the rail and fog & locking up to foreign heat sources like the sun and tropical ground cough cough Vietnam and this was due to sidewinder having infra red unlike the sparrow which had radar which itself needs tracked to the target by the phantom’s weapon systems operator better known as wizzo. And the sidewinder had a distinctive lock on growl.
My dear departed Mom had a pair of slippers that we called the sidewinder, pretty accurate even if you are on the run..🤣🤣
gosh, imagine being ordered to be on the reverse engineering team that worked on that unexploded sidewinder
Always been a sucker for aviation, topics and TOYS on top of many others! 🤣
Side or Megaprojects alike!
what specific vehicle ✈🛩 is going to come next? - Surprise me, there are many more!
aim-9 scary story...waiting for one of our hornets to land...catch the #3...but one sidewinder kept going skidding on the deck and off the angle. that was exciting!
Not sure the US Navy employed guns on their F-4 Phantoms that much. The USAF did employ 20 mm gun pods a lot more often on the F-4C/D models and then redesigning the nose in the F-4E to accommodate the 20 mm gun internally. The US Navy instead concentrated on better dissimilar air combat techniques (DACT) to get the best out of their planes and missiles which let to the Top Gun program.
Any game adverts you do Simon you should also do a video on brain blaze of you playing the game
Clearly this missile knows where it is at all times.
I don't know if the fused ring warhead was first used here, but it's concept is truly diabolical
I Bet Simon Would Be An Awsome Dude To Hang Out With Over Beers
Please do the AIM-54 Phoenix missle
My great grandfather worked on the heat seeking technology on the Sidewinder and some of her variants along with other secret weapons programs. At that time the base was called NOT (Naval Ordinance Testing) China Lake. I was born and raised (currently living) in the secret city. NAWS (Naval Air Weapons Station) China Lake is the largest weapons development and testing site in the world. There's a lot of desert out west. Simon you should do a video about NAWS China Lake and the early drone testing done here, I think you'll be surprised at what you find out about the place. Anyways back to the video I go. Thanks bow! this is going to be fun..
How about the YF-23 vs the YF-22.
PLEASE cover it...
Where did you get that figure for the Falklands conflict where the RAF have said time and time again that the sidewinder was NOT a game changer.
When have the RAF said that the Sidewinder was *not* a game changer? They've certainly tried to claim that the Sea Harrier was a game-changer (which is because of it's radar and AIM-9L), but never that the AIM-9 was not.
Simon W. needs to go mainstream... this dude could sell ice to people in the Artic
Imagine being one of those MiG pilots in that formation just be-bopping along when your wingman just disintegrates into an explosive fireball out of the blue without as much as a warning, and no enemy planes in sight.
Wingman-“WHAT THE FU….?!?!?!”
Flight leader-“What just happened to Bob?!?!”
Wingman- “I don’t know sir, he just ……vaporized! But please alert my ground crew to meet me at my aircraft when we land with a handful of Valium, a shot of booze, and one of my clean flight suits as well as a fire truck to hose out my cockpit. It’s kinda messy right now!” 🤣🤣🤣
The MIM-72 Chaparral was a ground fired AIM-9 used in an Air Defense role.
Amazing video,
Watched it twice
A nuclear tipped Aim 9 sidewinder is as hilariously OP as it is mortally dangerous.
Imagine being in a stealth, F-35 Lightning II responding to some sort of rogue state, let's say Iran, and you accidentally select to fire the nuke tipped, Aim-9 diamondback heat-seeking missile instead of the normal Aim-9x sidewinder which is "only" +80% effective.
All you had to do was quite literally look at the enemy F14-A, see Aim-9 and pull the trigger, and then the impact, is much, much brighter than it should be, be like "whoops, meant to send a normal one, instead I nuked you out of the sky, my bad"
Navy Phantoms never had internal guns in the Vietnam war. They had a centerline gun pod occasionally fitted. Toward the end of the war the USAF F-4E had a nose cannon. Prior to that the USAF also occasionally used the centerline gun pod.
Ahem... Navy pilots never relied on guns in their F-4's. Because they never got any. The USAF's F-4E variant got itself an internal gun and on Vietnam the USAF adopted the SUU-16 and SUU-23 gun pods with M61 cannons, and used them for air to air over North Vietnam in somewhat limited numbers, but with great success.