AIM-152 AAAM
Encyclopedia
Air-to-air missile
An air-to-air missile is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft. AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid fuelled but sometimes liquid fuelled...
developed by the United States of America. The program went through a protracted development stage but was never adopted by the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
, due to the ending of the cold war and the reduction in threat of its perceived primary target Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
supersonic bombers.
Overview
The AIM-152 originated in a U.S. Navy requirement for an advanced air-to-air missileMissile
Though a missile may be any thrown or launched object, it colloquially almost always refers to a self-propelled guided weapon system.-Etymology:The word missile comes from the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to send"...
to replace the AIM-54 Phoenix
AIM-54 Phoenix
The AIM-54 Phoenix is a radar-guided, long-range air-to-air missile , carried in clusters of up to six missiles on F-14 Tomcats, its only launch platform. The Phoenix was the United States' only long-range air-to-air missile. The weapons system based on Phoenix was the world's first to allow...
. By the mid 1980s the Phoenix was seen to be no longer cutting edge, and the Navy wanted a long range missile to counter the Soviet Tu-22M Backfire
Tupolev Tu-22M
The Tupolev Tu-22M is a supersonic, swing-wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber developed by the Soviet Union. Significant numbers remain in service with the Russian Air Force....
and Tu-160 Blackjack
Tupolev Tu-160
The Tupolev Tu-160 is a supersonic, variable-sweep wing heavy strategic bomber designed by the Tupolev Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. Although several civil and military transport aircraft are larger in overall dimensions, the Tu-160 is currently the world's largest combat aircraft, largest...
long-range supersonic
Supersonic
Supersonic speed is a rate of travel of an object that exceeds the speed of sound . For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C this speed is approximately 343 m/s, 1,125 ft/s, 768 mph or 1,235 km/h. Speeds greater than five times the speed of sound are often...
bomber
Bomber
A bomber is a military aircraft designed to attack ground and sea targets, by dropping bombs on them, or – in recent years – by launching cruise missiles at them.-Classifications of bombers:...
s. The goal was to produce a weapon which was smaller and lighter than the Phoenix, with equal or better range and a flight speed of Mach
Mach number
Mach number is the speed of an object moving through air, or any other fluid substance, divided by the speed of sound as it is in that substance for its particular physical conditions, including those of temperature and pressure...
3 or more.
Some of the systems considered for the missile had already been evaluated by the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the early 1980s as part of the Advanced Common Intercept Missile Demonstration (ACIMD) program. ACIMD missiles had been built but none had flown by the time the project was cancelled. In 1987, Hughes
Hughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Culver City, California as a division of Hughes Tool Company...
/Raytheon
Raytheon
Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007...
and General Dynamics
General Dynamics
General Dynamics Corporation is a U.S. defense conglomerate formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2008 it is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world. Its headquarters are in West Falls Church , unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Falls Church area.The company has...
/Westinghouse were selected to produce competing designs for the AIM-152.
The Hughes/Raytheon design was largely based on the ACIMD missile, with a hybrid ramjet
Ramjet
A ramjet, sometimes referred to as a stovepipe jet, or an athodyd, is a form of airbreathing jet engine using the engine's forward motion to compress incoming air, without a rotary compressor. Ramjets cannot produce thrust at zero airspeed and thus cannot move an aircraft from a standstill...
/solid rocket
Solid rocket
A solid rocket or a solid-fuel rocket is a rocket engine that uses solid propellants . The earliest rockets were solid-fuel rockets powered by gunpowder; they were used by the Chinese in warfare as early as the 13th century and later by the Mongols, Arabs, and Indians.All rockets used some form of...
engine which offered high speeds. The missile would use an inertial guidance system with terminal guidance provided by active radar - a mode of flight that would later be employed in the AIM-120 AMRAAM
AIM-120 AMRAAM
The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM , is a modern beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. Designed with the same form-factor as the previous generation of semi-active guided Sparrow missiles, it is a fire-and-forget...
. An infrared terminal homing seeker was also planned, which would allow the missile to engage without any emissions which would alert the target.
The GD/Westinghouse design was even smaller, with a multiple-pulse pure solid rocket
Solid rocket
A solid rocket or a solid-fuel rocket is a rocket engine that uses solid propellants . The earliest rockets were solid-fuel rockets powered by gunpowder; they were used by the Chinese in warfare as early as the 13th century and later by the Mongols, Arabs, and Indians.All rockets used some form of...
motor. It also had an inertial guidance system, but midcourse updating was provided via a dual-band semi-active radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
. Terminal guidance was via an electro-optical sensor, with a backup infrared seeker also included. One flaw of semi-active radar homing is that the launch aircraft must illuminate the target with its radar during flight, meaning that it must fly towards the enemy and so expose itself to greater danger. GD/Westinghouse planned to avoid this by equipping the launching aircraft with a radar pod which could illuminate the target from both forward and aft, allowing it to turn and escape whilst still providing a target for the missile.
With the fall of the Soviet Union the threat from Russian bombers effectively ended, and since no other nation could match the previous threat the AAAM was left without an enemy to defend against. The project was cancelled in 1992, shortly after the YAIM-152A designation had been given to the two prototypes.
With the phasing out of the Phoenix missile the US Navy lost its long range AAM capability, relying instead on the medium range AIM-120 AMRAAM. Longer range versions of the AMRAAM are in development to restore some of this capability.
Specifications
(Note that the YAIM-152A missiles were never built, and as a result any specifications are speculative.)Hughes/Raytheon :
- Length : 3.66 m (12 ft)
- Diameter : 231 mm (9 in)
- Weight : Less than 300 kg (660 lb)
- Speed : Mach 3+
- Range : 185 km+ (115 miles)
- Propulsion : Rocket/ramjet engine
- Warhead : 14 to 23 kg (30 to 50 lb) blast-fragmentation
GD/Westinghouse :
- Length : 3.66 m (12 ft)
- Diameter : 140 mm (5.5 in)
- Weight : 172 kg (380 lb)
- Speed : Mach 3+
- Range : > 185 km (100 nm)
- Propulsion : Multiple-pulse solid-propellant rocket
- Warhead : 14 to 23 kg (30 to 50 lb) blast-fragmentation