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Comment by a_crc | Hacker News Reader

Could you expand on this? I'm struggling to imagine a realistic scenario where visual confirmation of a target would be a requirement. I also don't see why an F-35 is at a major disadvantage inside visual range of a target. (FYI Visual range is farther than short range air to air missiles and much farther than gun range.)

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The AIM-54 Phoenix was used 2 times with exactly zero kills, because of ID concerns[1]. You don't just go around firing missiles to radar tracks you can't identify.

[1] by the US, Iran has used it more with more success.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-54_Phoenix#U.S._combat_exp...

The article you linked makes it sound like sensor and rocketry failures on some platforms that were retired 15 years ago, nothing to do with a general fear of BVR missile use. Also I believe the willingness to engage unidentified radar tracks has more to do with the nature of the conflict. I doubt the same restraint would be shown in a war against a near peer foe.

The point was not the zero kills, the point is that the US navy decided to use them in only two occasions.

In the case of the US involved conflicts it was working with allies and fighters lacking modern IFF that made the likelihood of friendly fire or collateral losses unacceptable to them.

It's a matter of acceptable risks. The AIM-54 was designed with a world war III in mind, employed in the middle of the ocean in closed airspaces were unidentified contacts could be treated as hostile with minimum political consequences.

The point I was making is here is an example of a time a major force decided not to use their prime BVR missile because of target identification concerns.

As a counter example, the US has continued to use the BVR AIM-120 even after accidentally shooting down one of their own helicopters in an IFF failure. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM#United_States_o...

In the particular case the missile was used after visual identification [1].

> The two F-15s now initiated a visual identification (VID) pass of the contact.

> Wickson's VID pass was conducted at a speed of about 450 knots (520 mph; 830 km/h), 500 feet (150 m) above and 1,000 feet (300 m) to the left of the helicopters.

Now I am not saying there is no room for BVR, ofcourse there is. The 2 tracks in formation coming from Russian airspace pinging you with their Russian military radars are definitely Russian fighters. But there are also a lot of times where there has to be a visual id.

A military jet with it's radars turned off is almost impossible to tell apart from a civilian jet based on radar data alone, and everyone errs on the side of caution, of course the side of caution occasionally is to fire first and id later[2][3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Black_Hawk_shootdown_inci... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...

You are right that regardless of the reasons for phasing out AIM-7, there are reasons to take a look at your target before firing at it. I suppose I was only thinking about "hot war" scenarios, not police actions in civilian airspace.

> A military jet with it's radars turned off is almost impossible to tell apart from a civilian jet based on radar data alone The F35 can identify the type (and multiple times the model) of a specific aircraft in passive mode. Forget in active radar mode.

The Phoenix was never the prime BVR for the US. It was a niche weapon for the USN, to combat the Backfire/Bear threat. Even for the USN, it wasn't the prime; the AIM-7 Sparrow was the primary AAM carried. Tomcats rarely carried Phoenix except when qualifying. It was too heavy, and the F-14 couldn't bring back all 6 to the carrier due to weight. If the Tomcat had stuck around longer, the AMRAAM would have been qual'd for it, and the Tomcat would probably have lost out to it.

And the reason it wasn't used much wasn't just ID issues, but cost. It was supremely expensive, in limited stocks. Why use it against an Su-22 in the Gulf of Sidra? Or waste it over Iraq?

Roughly, because the stealthier an aircraft is the less maneuverable it an be. Also, you need ammunition for a dog fight, which is mostly carried on the wings negating any stealth characteristics. And large internal bays make an aircraft less maneuverable.

AIM-9X has a 22 mile range...

The horizon is hundreds of miles away at altitude. You have to consider that visual range includes optical enhancement (telephoto lens etc.)

IRST can help, but it's like viewing the world through a straw. It works best when cued by other systems. I'm unaware of any telephoto systems in use since the F-14 was retired (obviously excluding the few airframes Iran might still be using).

Unaided pilot vision is unlikely to spot a target at 22 miles without some type of guidance.

True overall, (although don't discount the effect of a pair of binoculars in the cockpit) but in this case we're talking about intercepting a radar target for visual confirmation. If you have a radar track, by definition you would have the type of guidance you need to put other sensors on target.

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