Development
The Missileer project was cancelled in December 1960, but in the early 1960s Navy made the next interceptor attempt with the F-111B, and they needed a new missile design.
At the same time, the USAF canceled the projects for their land-based high-speed interceptor aircraft, the North American XF-108 Rapier and the Lockheed YF-12, and left the capable AIM-47 Falcon missile at a quite advanced stage of development, but with no effective launch platform.
The AIM-54 Phoenix, developed for the F-111B fleet air defense fighter, had an airframe with 4 cruciform fins that was a scaled-up version of the AIM-47. One characteristic of the Missileer ancestry was that the radar sent it mid-course corrections, which allowed the fire control system to "loft" the missile up over the target into thinner air where it had better range.
The F-111B was canceled in 1968. Its weapons system, the AIM-54 working with the AWG-9 radar, migrated to the new U.S. Navy fighter project, the VFX, which would later become the F-14 Tomcat.
In 1977, development of a significantly improved Phoenix version, the AIM-54C, was developed to better counter projected threats from tactical anti-naval aircraft and cruise missiles, and its final upgrade included a re-programmable memory capability to keep pace with emerging ECM.
In contrast to the Navy, the USAF adopted neither the AIM-47 nor the AIM-54 operationally. Its F-15 Eagle fighter planes have no similar capability at extremely long ranges. The latest AIM-120D AMRAAM has a significantly lower range of about 75 miles (121 km), but the AMRAAM is much shorter, lighter, and more flexible in its use against a wide variety of targets, including fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, patrol planes, and reconnaissance planes. The AMRAAM is also usable by a wide variety of fighter planes, including the F-4, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, Panavia Tornado, Eurofighter Typhoon, F-35 Lightning II, Swedish-made fighters, and ground-based launchers of the U.S. Army.
Read more about this topic: AIM-54 Phoenix
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)
“And then ... he flung open the door of my compartment, and ushered in “Ma young and lovely lady!” I muttered to myself with some bitterness. “And this is, of course, the opening scene of Vol. I. She is the Heroine. And I am one of those subordinate characters that only turn up when needed for the development of her destiny, and whose final appearance is outside the church, waiting to greet the Happy Pair!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“I’ve always been impressed by the different paths babies take in their physical development on the way to walking. It’s rare to see a behavior that starts out with such wide natural variation, yet becomes so uniform after only a few months.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)