Home Discussion Topics Dictionary Almanac

Signup Login

Beyond Visual Range missile

Overview

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Beyond Visual Range missile'

Start a new discussion about 'Beyond Visual Range missile'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Unanswered Questions

Is there any Ground missile can be directed by laser from the Ground for land fprce aplaction

Recent Discussions

Why astra (air-air missile) developed by INDIA also called as beyond visual range missile?????????

What are the methods to prevent fratricide when using BVR missiles?

Encyclopedia

A beyond-visual-range missile
Missile
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"...

usually refers to an air-to-air missile

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...

that is capable of engaging at ranges beyond 20 nmi (37 km). This range has been achieved using dual pulse rocket motors or booster rocket motor and 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...

sustainer motor.

In addition to the range capability, the missile must also be capable of tracking its target at this range or of acquiring the target in flight. Systems in which a mid-course correction is transmitted to the missile have been used.

Early air-to-air missiles used semi-active radar guidance, that is the missile used the radiation produced by the launching aircraft to guide it to the target. The latest generation of BVR missiles use a combination of semi-active and active radar.

The first such missiles were relatively simple beam riding

Beam riding

Beam-riding, also known as beam guidance, is a technique of directing a missile to its target by means of radar or a laser beam. The name refers to the way the missile flies down the guidance beam, which is aimed at the target...

designs that were soon replaced by semi-active radar homing

Semi-active radar homing

Semi-active radar homing, or SARH, is a common type of missile guidance system, perhaps the most common type for longer-range air-to-air and surface-to-air missile systems. The name refers to the fact that the missile itself is only a passive detector of a radar signal – provided by an external ...

(SARH). This is where the launching aircraft's radar is "locked"

Missile lock-on

Missile lock-on refers to a scenario where the guidance system for a missile can accurately track a target, and a fire-control system can calculate the required flightpath for the missile to hit the target...

onto the target in a single target track (STT) mode, directing a radar energy at the target that the missile seeker can "see" as it reflects off the target. The radar antenna must "illuminate" the target until impact. Missiles like the 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...

AIM-7 Sparrow

The AIM-7 Sparrow is an American, medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile operated by the United States Air Force, United States Navy and United States Marine Corps, as well as various allied air forces and navies. Sparrow and its derivatives were the West's principal beyond visual...

and Vympel R-27 (NATO designation AA-10 'Alamo') home in on the reflected radiation, much as a laser-guided bomb

Laser-guided bomb

A laser-guided bomb is a guided bomb that uses semi-active laser homing to strike a designated target with greater accuracy than an unguided bomb. LGBs are one of the most common and widespread guided bombs, used by a large number of the world's air forces.- Overview :Laser-guided munitions use a...

homes in on the reflected laser radiation. Some of the longest-range missiles in use today still use this technology.

The first air-to-air missile to introduce a terminal active seeker of its own was 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...

carried by the F-14 Tomcat, which entered service in 1972. This relieved the launch platform of the need to illuminate the target until impact putting it at risk. The Phoenix and its associated Tomcat radar, the AWG-9 was capable of multiple track and launch capability, which was unique to the Tomcat/Phoenix until the advent of AMRAAM in 1991.

Newer fire-and-forget

Fire-and-forget

Fire-and-forget is a third-generation method of missile guidance. The military uses the term for a type of missile which does not require further guidance after launch such as illumination of the target or wire guidance , and can hit its target without the launcher being in line-of-sight of the...

type missiles like the 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...

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...

and the Vympel R-77

Vympel R-77

The Russian R-77 Missile is a medium range, air-to-air, active radar-guided missile system. It is the Russian counterpart to the American AIM-120 AMRAAM missile, thus gaining a nickname: Amraamski....

(NATO designation AA-12 'Adder') instead use an inertial navigation system

Inertial navigation system

An inertial navigation system is a navigation aid that uses a computer, motion sensors and rotation sensors to continuously calculate via dead reckoning the position, orientation, and velocity of a moving object without the need for external references...

(INS) combined with initial target information from the launching aircraft and updates from a one or two-way data link in order to launch beyond visual range, and then switch to a terminal homing mode, typically active radar guidance

Active radar homing

Active radar homing is a missile guidance method in which a guided missile contains a radar transceiver and the electronics necessary for it to find and track its target autonomously...

. These types of missiles have the advantage of not requiring the launching aircraft to illuminate the target with radar energy for the entire flight of the missile, and in fact do not require a radar lock to launch at all, only target tracking information. This gives the target less warning that a missile has been launched and also allows the launching aircraft to turn away once the missile is in its terminal homing phase or engage other aircraft. The very longest-range missiles like the 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...

(now 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...

) AIM-54 Phoenix missile and Vympel R-33

Vympel R-33

The Vympel R-33 is a long-range air-to-air missile developed by the Soviet Union. It is the primary armament of the MiG-31 interceptor, intended to attack large high-speed targets such as the SR-71 Blackbird, the B-1 Lancer bomber, and the B-52 Stratofortress....

(NATO designation AA-9 'Amos') use this technique also.

Some variants of the Vympel R-27 use semi-active radar homing

Semi-active radar homing

Semi-active radar homing, or SARH, is a common type of missile guidance system, perhaps the most common type for longer-range air-to-air and surface-to-air missile systems. The name refers to the fact that the missile itself is only a passive detector of a radar signal – provided by an external ...

(SARH) for the initial guidance and then passive infra-red guidance for the final stage. This type of missile requires active guidance for a longer part of the flight than fire-and-forget

Fire-and-forget

Fire-and-forget is a third-generation method of missile guidance. The military uses the term for a type of missile which does not require further guidance after launch such as illumination of the target or wire guidance , and can hit its target without the launcher being in line-of-sight of the...

missiles but will still guide to the target even if radar lock is broken in the crucial final seconds of the engagement and may be harder to spoof with chaff

Chaff (radar countermeasure)

Chaff, originally called Window by the British, and Düppel by the Second World War era German Luftwaffe , is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminium, metallized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of secondary...

due to the dual-type guidance.

Investments in BVR air to air combat have almost entirely failed to achieve their objectives. However, technological advances had considerably increased the success rate of BVR combat during Operation Desert Storm.

External links

Meteor blazes path but challenges remain Jane's Defence Weekly, 31 August 2006

Beyond Visual Range missile

See also

External links