{"id":2630,"date":"2009-12-15T00:40:09","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T08:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=2630"},"modified":"2009-12-14T22:32:29","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T06:32:29","slug":"air-force-sinks-boat-with-sidewinder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/15\/air-force-sinks-boat-with-sidewinder\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force Sinks Boat with Sidewinder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Raytheon, a defense contractor that builds a variety of missiles and other systems for the military, announced that its AIM-9X <em>Sidewinder<\/em>&#8211;a heat-seeking, air-to-air missile&#8211;was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.upi.com\/Business_News\/Security-Industry\/2009\/12\/11\/Raytheon-Sidewinder-hits-target\/UPI-48331260573400\/?pvn=1\">successfully employed<\/a>&#8211;in an air-to-<em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">ground<\/span><\/em> test.<\/p>\n<p>The use of air-to-air missiles in an air-to-ground role has an interesting history.\u00a0 Pilots who flew in <!--more-->Vietnam recount the use of AIM-9s against North Vietnamese searchlights (with questionable success).\u00a0 (See stories on &#8220;Ryan&#8217;s Raiders.&#8221;)\u00a0 Because air-to-air missiles are designed to destroy aircraft, their guidance systems and warheads are not optimized for ground targets&#8211;meaning they may be <em>fired<\/em> at targets on the ground, but that doesn&#8217;t mean they will hit them or destroy them.<\/p>\n<p>These tests by Raytheon (<a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/news\/newsfeeds\/articles\/prnewswire\/NE23052.htm\">three have been conducted thus far<\/a>) would appear to be the first in which the missile was designed and intended to be used against a ground (or maritime) target.<\/p>\n<p>Pilots say &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/fighterpilotspeak.htm#fox\">Fox 2<\/a>&#8221; on the radio to announce the launch of a heat-seeking missile like the AIM-9.\u00a0 Wonder if some witty pilot will come up with a new term for an air-to-ground launch.<\/p>\n<p>Fox Hole?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raytheon, a defense contractor that builds a variety of missiles and other systems for the military, announced that its AIM-9X Sidewinder&#8211;a heat-seeking, air-to-air missile&#8211;was successfully employed&#8211;in an air-to-ground test. The use of air-to-air missiles in an air-to-ground role has an interesting history.\u00a0 Pilots who flew in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[13,2,90],"class_list":["post-2630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-aircraft","tag-military","tag-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}