AIM-9Ls - UK service - 1982

[TEEEJ]

Hi,
This question raises its head quite a few times during debates. I would be grateful if someone could provide a definitive answer?

Was there any AIM-9Ls in UK hands before the Falklands? If so were these the missiles declared as part of UK NATO war stocks?

A common belief is that the US agreed to sell to the UK the very next batch of AIM-9L that was manufactured, allowing the UK to both use the AIM-9Ls and maintain the NATO war stock. Thanks in advance for any replies.

[Navaleye]

Memory fades, but as far as I can remember they were on order, but not delivered by April 1, 1982. Shipments were expedited from US stocks, perhaps the C-130 contingent can provide more gen.

[LunchMonitor]

Crucial Falklands role played by US missiles

Nicholas Watt
Friday September 6, 2002
The Guardian

Margaret Thatcher would have lost the Falklands war in 1982 if America had failed to provide crucial missiles to bolster British air defences, according to an adviser to the former prime minister.
America, which angered the Thatcher government with its initially even-handed approach to the conflict, was believed to have provided little more than intelligence once Washington lost patience with the Argentinians.

But British and American officials say in the BBC documentary that Washington provided the latest Sidewinder missiles at 48 hours' notice after the British task force came under fire.

Lord Renwick, a senior diplomat in the British embassy in Washington, who went on to become ambassador, told the programme: "My role was to go along to the Pentagon and ask them for 105 Sidewinder missiles. These were the very latest version, which were far more accurate than the earlier versions and we wanted them delivered within 48 hours. That meant stripping part of the frontline US air force of those missiles and sending them to the South Atlantic."

Lord Powell of Bayswater, Lady Thatcher's key foreign affairs adviser, said that Britain would have lost the war without such assistance.

His remarks were echoed by Richard Perle, an assistant US defence secretary at the time, who said: "Britain would probably have lost the war without American assistance. That's how significant it was."

[TEEEJ]

Thanks for giving me and many others on here a laugh!

An example of why 'The Guardian' should only be used to wrap fish and chips in!

Obviously the journalist and his sources had never heard of the AIM-9G! Most of the take downs of Argentine aircraft were rear-hemisphere which the G model could have easily coped with. IIRC there was only one attempted head-on shot.

[BEagle]

But that was mainly due to the SHAR FRS1 being very new and the crews having had little time to practise autonomous radar intercepts in single seat fighters with head sector 9 Limas....

Most Mx kills were eyeball shots which 9Gs could have been used for; however, it wasn't just the wider aspect capability of the 9Ls which made them so tasty!

[Navaleye]

IIRC, the only time a head on lock-on was attempted it didn't work :( So they were all rear aspect kills. I beleive the L has a superior design warhead and proxy fuse to the G as well.

[Busta]

We had 9l's before the war, then they all suddenly vanished!

When reading the combat reports during dull moments in FI ( after the fighting!), it seemed to us that most of the kills were Christmas presents.

[TEEEJ]

We had 9l's before the war, then they all suddenly vanished!

Busta,
Were those 9l's assigned/earmarked for NATO declared RAF F-4 units?

[Maple 01]

Didn't we 'borrow' some from a NATO store on the QT? (duty rumor in ’83)

It's better to take and ask forgiveness afterwards than to seek permission beforehand and be turned down

[wiggy]

We had them briefly for the Wattisham F-4 wing _before_ the "conflict". They disappeared rather rapidly the weekend before the Task Force sailed.
Don't know whose inventory they were on.

[grobace]

Sorry to come to this topic late. However, apart from the head-on aspect, a major advantage of the L over the G and earlier variants was its ability to counter the flare threat.
Wiggy, I think your memory is playing you tricks about the Wtm Wg getting 9Ls before the conflict. If my memory serves me right, our boffins developed the SWIFT mod for the 9G at extremely short notice in the lead-up to the conflict just in caser we couldn't get our hands on any Ls. Also, after the conflict we had to persevere with 9G(SWIFT)s for some time before getting Ls as the 9L procurement was earmarked for the SHAR.

[Hangin' on]

But weren't the AIM 9 L's the self same missiles that had those pesky 'remove before flight' tags and pins removed by the (ever helpful) VC10 loadmonsters..........:ooh:

[BEagle]

No, those were Sea-somethings. Sea Skuas?

SWIFT didn't do anything to improve the off-boresight capability of the -9G. Are you sure you didn't mean SEAM? I remember claiming Fox 2s with SEAM which were hotly contended until QWIN checked the range and angle off!

SWIFT was very, very secret squirrel, IIRC.....

[BTDTGTTShirt]

Beags Think you are wrong. You can carry about 16 sidewinders in racking on a pallet and the missiles would be exposed and have their remove before flight flags on show. Sea Skuas / Slugs = Big Bullet in a big box – No flag visible!

The GR3’s had a last minute lash up job to carry sidewinders IIRC. I remember just after the war one of them had snag (probably with his weight on switches) and dropped two as he did a vertical take off from the tin strip at Stanley. Unfortunately one of them ploughed through a group of passengers waiting for Albert to arrive and take them home. Some nasty injuries but fortunately no one killed

[grobace]

BEagle

SWIFT = SideWinder in Flare Threat, i.e. a mod that enabled the 9G to 'ignore' flares and home on exhaust IR.
SEAM = SideWinder Expanded Acquisition Mode. Must admit I can't remember what that did - probably because I never really understood it!

[BEagle]

It drove the seeker head into an expanded search pattern; thus you could fire the thing in lag as long as the seeker head could see the target and you weren't outside missile aerodynamic limits......I think. There was a SEAM/BST switch in the front and I think that the nws button was also used to slave the seeker head to the MCS? If this is bolleaux, please don't be too harsh as it was about 23 years ago!

I thought SWIFT was SideWinder Improved Flare Technology? And I know how it achieved that, but that might still be classified?

[wiggy]

grobace

Have to agree to disagree about the Wattisham 9Ls in 82.

As to SWIFT, I spoke to some of the "boffins"at STCAAME in the early 80s, it certainly was not something that was invented and rushed into service, Barnes Wallis style.
Also, as I'm sure you know, it would not turn a G into an L; it was something else entirely.
(Could SWIFT even be fitted to the G? From fading memory I recall the SWIFT hardware was installed where the coolant bottle went on the American 9L's )

BEagle -You described SEAM pretty much as I remember it.

[grobace]

Wiggy

We'll just have to agree to disagree about when the 9L came into RAF service unless someone in Air Def at the time comes up with a definitive answer.
However, notwithstanding what the STCAAME boffins said to you - and some of them were pretty good at the bull**** baffles brains bit - I am fairly sure about the background to SWIFT. Also, it was never used on the 9L (no need), but was indeed a module which went into the redundant space for a US-type coolant bottle on the 9G. Earlier versions of the AiM-9 also had this coolant bottle space, or at least the 9B did; I know 'cos I flew wirth 9Bs strapped on quite a few years ago.
For BEagle - I can't remember now exactly what the acronym SWIFT stood for, but like you, I have a recollection of what it did and how it achieved its aim. But I don't think we need to elaborate on that in this forum!
Finally, for Wiggy, thanks for your PM.

[engineer(retard)]

Grobace

You are wrong about 9L/SWIFT, it had a unique identifier but will not give any more detail here.

Beagle

You are pretty spot on a but SEAM, it drove an epicyclic scan pattern about the slave angle, bit like a daisy shape drawn by spirograph. It was driven from a something called the SEAM processor that was fitted to the MCS as a mod in the early 80's.

I heard the pins story as winder as well.

The IR detection side of 9L was also very different to 9G.

I recall the GR3 accident as being caused by jettison being selected on the ground. The rocket motors fired as the WOW came off, but the warheads were not armed. Regrettably, they did cause very serious injuries

Regards

Retard

[BEagle]

A 'heptacyclic' pattern, IIRC? 7 'petal' search pattern around the origin?

And II also RC, many of the SEAM processors which were first fitted were NFG?

[engineer(retard)]

Beagle

You could be right about hepta but I was very young at the time and could only count in English. Epi made sense as it seemed eccentric. I escaped MCS just before the mods started as it seemed like too much hard work. Posted to Lossie for Buccs when they were grounded at Honington. It was an outstanding career move.

[Pontius Navigator]

If America provided 9Ls within 48 hours of teh task force coming under fire, exactly how did they get the the carriers for the Harriers?

Possibly flown to ASI and then shipped south by fast tramp steamer perhaps?

[Circuit Basher]

All
Unclassified extract from Janes about the development sequence of AIM9 - may jog some memories!
AIM-9 SIDEWINDER
Type

Short-range, IR air-to-air missile.

Development

This quite exceptional development programme started at what is now called the US Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, California in the late 1940s. The first prototype flew in 1953 and the first generation of Sidewinder, the AIM-9B, entered service with the US Navy and US Air Force in 1956. Designed by the US Navy staff at China Lake, the Sidewinder family is now in its fourth generation, with the latest version AIM-9X now in development. The basic Sidewinder airframe shape and simplicity of design has been carried through the entire life of the family, although there has been a continuing product improvement programme, with new versions developed at about five year intervals. A surface-to-air variant, called MIM-72 Chaparral, was developed for the US Army. Many marks of Sidewinder have been made under licence in other countries and many `lookalikes' have been built without licence, such as the Russian AA-2 `Atoll'. The first generation of Sidewinder, AIM-9B, divided into three separate development programmes, all funded by the US Army, US Navy and US Air Force. The US Army developed the MIM-72 Chaparral surface-to-air variant, the US Navy developed AIM-9D and a semi-active radar seeker version AIM-9C and the US Air Force developed AIM-9E. These second-generation systems entered service in 1965 but were improved again when the US Navy developed Sea Chaparral and AIM-9G/H, while the US Air Force developed AIM-9J and P. Export versions of AIM-9J were designated AIM-9N and AIM-9P. Finally, the US Navy and Air Force came together and moved to a joint development programme for the third generation of Sidewinder missiles in 1970, making the major performance change from earlier `tail aspect engagement only' systems in the first- and second-generation Sidewinders, to an all-aspect capability with AIM-9L Sidewinder. In addition, the AIM-9L was designed with stringent reliability requirements, superior to any other air-to-air missile system with a long storage life and several hundred hours of aircraft-carried flight without defect. The Chaparral system was developed further by the US Army to an equivalent standard with MIM-72-C/E/F/G and H versions. Production of AIM-9L started in the US in 1976 and under licence in Europe and Japan in the early 1980s. Further development continued and the AIM-9M version entered production in the US in 1982, with principally an IR countermeasures capability to detect and reject decoy flares, but also with a new reduced smoke motor. AIM-9M flare rejection circuits were upgraded following operational experience in the 1991 Gulf war. A programme was started in 1997 to replace the AIM-9M seeker cooling system with a cryogenic cooling engine, to be located within a modified guidance and control unit, and to further improve the performance against flares. This upgrade is known as the AIM-9M-9 missile. AIM-9S is almost the same as AIM-9M, but with a slightly larger warhead. AIM-9R was being developed to improve further on AIM-9M and was expected in service in the early 1990s, fitted with a visual band CCD seeker, but this programme was halted in 1992.
Further development of Sidewinder was pursued by the US, with several programmes funded from 1989 examining various options for what has become known as AIM-9X or Sidewinder 2000. Two 18 month demonstration/validation contracts were awarded in 1994 to Raytheon and Hughes (now both Raytheon Missile Systems). A final selection for AIM-9X was made in December 1996, referred to as Evolved Sidewinder, and an engineering, manufacturing and development programme started in 1997. A flight development programme started in 1999, and initial production is planned to start in 2001. AIM-9X will be a tail-control missile, but still using the basic Sidewinder airframe, warhead, fuze and motor. A joint service helmet-mounted cueing system is being developed to complement the AIM-9X missile, providing the pilot with an off-boresight target designation system. It is planned that a product improvement programme will start in 2001 to upgrade the warhead, fuze and motor assemblies for AIM-9X. A report in 2000 indicated that a surface-to-air variant of AIM-9X is being designed.
A development programme started in 1982 to modify old AIM-9C semi-active radar guidance and control sections for use on Sidewinder airframes as anti-radiation missiles, these entered service in 1989 as AGM-122A Sidearm. BGT in Germany developed a conversion kit for upgrading AIM-9J/N/P guidance and control assemblies to the AIM-9L standard, and this was marketed as AIM-9JULI. Ford Aerospace, now Lockheed Martin, developed a dual-mode passive RF/IR seeker for the Sidewinder guidance and control assembly, but it is believed that this was intended for use on the SAM variant MIM-72 Chaparral. Sidewinders have been fitted to a large number of aircraft throughout the world and these have included the F-4, F-104, F-5, F-8, A-4, A-6, A-7, F-111, Mirage 3, MiG-21, A-10, JA 37 Viggen, Kfir, F-20, OV-10, Mirage F1, Mitsubishi F-1, Hawk, Sea Harrier, Harrier, Tornado GR. 1, Tornado F3, Nimrod MR2, Jaguar, F-14, Buccaneer, F-15, F-16 and F/A-18. There have been trials from helicopters over several years, including AH-64A Apache in 1987 and AH-1 Cobra in 1988. AIM-9M/S missiles have been launched from the F-22 Raptor prototype, using an LAU-141/A extending trapeze rail launch system from the internal weapons bay and the AIM-9X Sidewinder version is planned to be the short-/medium-range AAM for this aircraft. AIM-9X is expected to be integrated onto F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F/A-18 Hornet, JAS-39 Gripen, Eurofighter Typhoon and F-22 Raptor aircraft, but initial development trials are being carried out using F-15 and F/A-18 aircraft. An unconfirmed report suggests that the F-117 can carry up to four Sidewinder missiles in internal weapons bays, with trapeze frames lowering the missiles on their launch rails into the airstream, prior to firing.

[grobace]

Good post, Circuit Basher, and one that sure does refresh the memory more than a little! After 20-odd years I could have sworn that the Lima had IR countermeasures, but clearly that was not the case, and SWIFT must therefore have been used to overcome that deficiency.
Think I'll stick to talking about things that happened this century henceforth!

[engineer(retard)]

Those trapeze frames must play merry hell with the alignment, how far do they drop below the airframe?

[maxburner]

I remember clearly (as a QWI at Wattisham) that we had 9L before the conflict and they were taken away in a Herc a few days before the task force sailed. SEAM was an F4 mod to give better off-boresight acquisition capability - with the 7 petal scan pattern as mentioned earlier. SWIFT was an anti-flare measure.

Apart from the head-on capability the L had greater G available than the G (if you know what I mean), better aim point selection and better turning ability at low speed due to the new wings. It also had improved (laser) fuzing to go along with the faster approach speed of a head-on engagement. That said, its head-on capability against a cold power, subsonic target was not great.

[BEagle]

Hey - I obviously remembered something the long-suffering QWIs taught me at Wattisham!

Thanks chaps - a top bunch (apart from the camp one!)....

[grobace]

Thanks, maxburner, you seem pretty certain about it, so apologies to Wiggy from me for bad-mouthing his memory. However, if we had 9Ls in the UK inventory when the task force sailed, why did we need the US to supply us with them?

[dmanton300]

However, if we had 9Ls in the UK inventory when the task force sailed, why did we need the US to supply us with them?

Possibly because those -9L's already in the inventory were NATO war stocks? Or something. . . .

[Blakey875]

Hey guys I've waited long enough but nobody has given a true answer yet as to how we got the birds. Fact is at least one Herc sortie was mounted to USAFE Spagdahlen in April 1982 to pick up some AIM 9L and AGM54 missiles for our use courtesy of Maggie sucking up to Ron. They were quickly moved to Asi. The 9L's went south on a warship and the 54's were fitted to the Vulcan. Ok?