Forget Stealth and F-35s: Missiles and Radar Changed Warfare Forever

Charlie Gao

Security,

Active radar homing air-to-air missiles were a game-changer.

Key point: A lethal combination that created modern air war as we know it.

At the end of the Cold War, there were major revolutions in the technology used for aerial combat. The most visible one was stealth, with the iconic diamond shaped F-117 and B-2 stealth bombers and the F-22 stealth fighter. But a second revolution was underway, with major implications for the USAF and other air forces. The active radar homing (ARH) air-to-air missile began to replace semi-active radar homing (SARH) air-to-air missiles as the primary medium and long-range missiles that armed every fighter.

But how exactly did this revolution occur? Why were the 1980s a big turning point? What’s the future of active radar homing missiles?

An active radar homing missile differs from a semi-active radar homing missile in that the missile’s seeker has its own radar transmitter to accompany a receiver. Semi-active missiles only have a receiver and require the launching aircraft to use its own radar to “designate” an enemy aircraft for the missile to engage.

This burdens SARH with a lot of limitations. The launching aircraft must provide a radar signal, so it must keep its radar pointed at the enemy aircraft. While radars have a limited range of motion for search, generally an aircraft must keep flying at an enemy aircraft to guide a SARH missile.

It also means that if an aircraft is destroyed or the launching aircraft is forced to maneuver by other missiles or aircraft, then the missile will break lock and go “dumb”. The range of SARH missiles also can be limited by the range of the launching aircraft: if the radar is too weak or if the enemy aircraft is too far out, a SARH seeker may not be able to attain the initial lock before launch. Later SARH missiles have lock-on after launch (LOAL) capability, that mitigates but doesn’t eliminate this limitation.