Sidewinder - The Weapon That Changed Air Combat 

It's gone through quite a bit of upgrades and tunes, but the principle has stayed the same ever sense inseption.

This reminds of a land speed record holding pickup, incidentally called Sidewinder. All the other vehicles going for the record were towed in on a trailer. The Sidewinder, a Dodge Dakota with a Cummins Diesel hot rodded by Banks, showed up pulling a trailer. They unhooked the trailer, swapped the street tires for racing slicks and were ready to go.

the m1911 of the missiles

The Russian MiG pilot who got a sidewinder stuck in its fuselage without exploding was a lucky SOB. Due to its relative simplicity it was fairly easy to reverse engineer it by the Russians, talk about a rare find. ;)

Not to mention a right squirrelly nut... The antics at the end there were impressive

That’s funny

That is the military that I know. I worked on F106 delta darts that had the inferior missile system referred to in this document. The saving grace is it also had an 8 foot long, 10 inch diameter nuclear Armed ballistic rocket to lob at enemy aircraft. Like horseshoes, all it had to do is get close enough to score points.

Ah yes, the shitting on government institutions and those who work there (except the military, OF COURSE) is long lived - and not less stupid today than it was "in the sixties".

@@xBINARYGODx As someone who worked as a civilian employee under DON for 45 years, I appreciate your comment. All of the people that I knew were hardworking, well educated, and conscientious. And I did know of some people who were fired for various reasons. For what its worth, I respect and admire the US military.

@@xBINARYGODx I served from 1977 until 1985. Onbase civil employees were great. I have friends who still work for the Government and in DC. Our last visit there was great! I'm sure some suck but the ones I met did their Job and did it with a smile. Hell, even the Coffee and Burger none Gov workers were cool! Go to Paris if you want to meet employees who suck!

​@@fella704 what kind of ducks are you hunting?

@@MastaChiefa99 All of them.

It can also be carried by attack helicopters such as the Apache and Viper.

It can also be mounted on M113 for self defense.

Ya it slammed into a MIG in the Korean war and failed to detonate. Just imagine the luck of that MIG pilot. lol

Yes. But since the initial version of the AIM -9 had no computer onboard, the control is better described as a negative feedback system, which use the gyro as a reference and compare the seeker output while zeroing it by adjusting the trajectory controlling the rocket vanes at the back...

All early versions, through at least the G model as I recall, were proportional guidance only which does NOT result in a constant bearing solution. It results, instead, in constant corrections to offset error and resulting overcorrection, then correction, etc, etc, giving the missile flight a snaking path and resulting in it's name "Sidewinder". I know because I'm an F-4 era USMC fighter pilot with an AIM-9 drone kill (also an AIM-7 Sparrow drone kill). Both good enough to reward myself with a beer at a following happy hour.😁

@@rayoflight62 The guidance for every 'Winder from day one was by a computer, however rudimentary it would be considered today. There is no gyro in the seeker, merely a measurement of the seeker off-boresight angle generating a proportional error signal to that 'computer'. That signal was processed to drive the canards for guidance, no rocket vanes or any other control at the aft end of the missile. You should not post what you can't verify as fact.

@@tedhammond3631 There was actually a gyro of sorts: a Cassegrain telescopic mirror system rotated initially about the centreline of the missile airframe. In early prototypes it used a unique spherical bearing system to allow full pitch & yaw movement of the scan head without need for traditional gimbals.

So what you’re saying the missile knows where it is because it knows where it isn’t

Also known as the ship of Theseus :-)

Or Trigger's Broom

@@MattFenlon or my 1200 bandit. Thinking about it, there is the frame that is original and that's been cut and welded.

You got sweaty nuts? I'm over drinking water,butt pirates from London town and pvc foam and bbvccc you know it's Osama bin Laden BING bong vin diesel

What piece of modern war tech isn’t though? Consider every longstanding vehicle, weapon, gear, etc. Almost all of them which aren’t immediately replaced and enjoys even the slightest longevity will be incrementally upgraded continually until obsolescence. At this point, I would be more interested in seeing a reliable piece of military hardware that *isn’t* more or less ‘grandpa’s axe’.

One thing people often don't realise is that engineering teams are much much smaller today than they used to be. 100 people's work is now often done by 15 people today. One side effect of this is how the core deliverables always get done. But all those extra brains aren't available to solve things.

@@TerryTerius lmfao funny enough i got personal experience. Our group in our robotics shop class litterally suffered the same shit. We had a simple goal of just having our robot do the most tasks in the play field. But our team was massive, and everyone wanted to do the same thing. As a result no one changed the base lego robot, and had to face off with one of the most limited robots in our school competition. Meanwhile, a group from another school just had 2 people in it, and ended up winning and had the most versatile robot.

All you need is a very intelligent creative mind. Not computers.

@@kiuk_kiks Yup. The Computer or the slide rule and paper are just tools to enable the creative mind to work.

Dont forget calculators

The missile letting the pilot know that the enemy won’t escape alive lol

The inert space around the electronics was filled with a product called "ecojell". Similar to silicon rubber.

Classic communists lol. Would rather painstakingly steal equipment to copy than just make their own damn missiles

Asimov's rules were meant to be breaken in his books

@@Fede_uyz seems like most people watched that awful film "I, robot" instead of actually reading the book.

@@switchtheflip9422 no, the rules were meant for asimov to break them later

@@Fede_uyz My point is that the current heated debate over the dangers of AI and robot drones is human society's appallingly slow reaction to the reality that robots have been tasked to kill people since at least the 1950s.

@@Fede_uyz no, the book shows that the rules were flawed.

Love that museum

Did they remove the fuse?

@@archae108 I would imagine the fuse and explosives would be replaced by inert components instead.

@@merlinious01 Good

@@archae108 No, It stayed in to kill anyone who's stupid enough to bump it.

Is it public what the improvements were? That is fascinating.

@@airthrowDBT it is now. They are moving the museum off the base and have half of if completed. I was there in the summer. It's in Ridgecrest, CA. It's a small museum, but there's lots of need stuff in it.

Yep. Grew up there. 100% correct. There's lots more about it of course.

I was stationed there over 40 years ago. Saw things I could never tell anyone. To this day I see "new" weapons that are the product of our efforts

As you walk down the 2nd floor hallway of our hanger where the offices were I saw wonderful historical photos. Most people just walked past but I stopped and read them all. there is no way to describe the awe I felt of how incredible it all was. We were building the future.

Look for that as hard as you can. Your grandad sounds great.

do a spell check please.

It's weird, but a lot of good projects start like this, underrated.

Yeah. We know. Thanks for stating the obvious.

@@Kabup2 So true. But that can help because no ones expecting to much from you. And it can make the big reveal more spectacular.

A case of Keep It Simple Stupid basically

Even the name's on point

Yes, an awesome shirt here!

He arose early in the morning to pick it out

No, you aren't. As you should have gleaned from the comment sections of this very series. But I guess you just couldn't resist piping up and all you could come up with was stating the painfully obvious.

You're not alone my friend

Yeah, iirc Madcap used to actually sponsor him. I'm not sure what he wears in between videos, but I wish I could dress like his videos ever day.

What incredible work! I'm very envious of your father and we could only hope to be spending time participating in something so revolutionary. Was he educated at a big uni?

That's really cool.

Sounds kinda spooky !!

Used. Past tense. Only the very first generation used rods. All other later variations used conventional abs traditional frag. :)

Yup, they are long gone, never to be seen again! Our current crop of smart phone engineers couldn't engineer themselves out of a wet bag, NASA engineers aside. However NASA is busily diluting their engineering pool with PC liberal studies engineers who will use their pronouns correctly but little else!

@Will.J Doubtful. Along with a list of continuing atrocities a mile long, and probably continued world war in conflict with their former allies, Japan. They had fundimentally different idealogies, and mainly had an alliance out of convenience. ... I dont think that world would be as positive as you seem to think.

LOL. How romantic you make it sound. Engineers, just like everyone else, are just trying to keep their jobs, so you fight on proposals to win. You put in long hours to put out a better product, or simply meet schedule. It was nothing more than economics, not great thinking and not letting it go to waste.

@@peterhaan9068 The most unfortunate part about the current crop that I've seen is that the companies laid off the experienced engineers before they could pass along their corporate memories and lessons learned. The young ones I saw "don't even know what they don't know", and I've seen them proudly publicize "solutions" to problems they've solved that I would have been embarrassed to admit I made in the first place! Very sad, but that's what happens when Finance starts running Engineering companies.

@@peterhaan9068 Yup all the engineers now suck. Oh except the ones working for Rocketlab, SpaceX, and Lockheed Martin (who recently flew a scram jet for darpa that actually worked finally), the people making the most advanced processor architectures of all time making all of this possible. Just because it wasn't developed using a slide rule doesn't mean it isn't good. We got teams half the size doing things that NASA couldn't dream of. Go watch a video of the two space x rockets landing at the same time from orbit, on what is essentially a helicopter pad. You got no clue what our engineers are capable of. The prosthetics Neuralink enables, the advancements from Google Deep Mind and Open Ai that are making things smarter than we are currently. Unless you don't consider software engineers as engineers. In that case check out the quantum computers we made, or the st40 tokamak experimental fusion reactor. Things that you couldn't imagine in the past. We got significantly better, you just closed your eyes and remembered the worst examples of today and compared them to the best of the past.

"... and the mechanical complexity of a sliderule ...". And they actually used sliderules while doing the work!

@@GraemePayne1967Marine I used my slide rule (Post Versalog) professionally for a number of years. If you know what you're doing, they are quite useful.

@@charlessmith6412 My grandfather could work out a delta-V on his slide rule faster than I can punch the formula into a calculator.

@@muninrob Before graduating in 1970 (BSEE), I was fairly proficient with a slide rule. But now I barely know how to use one. I blame my own laziness and reliance on calculators.

How does it work when the sun, the enemy aircraft and the sidewinder are all aligned on the same straight?

China Lake, CA: A thousand mad geniuses surrounded by 5000 methheads.

If the team really was thrown out the window and still succeeded with the project, they would probably call it The Defenestrator.

You didnt get it right : the time they took was from their FREE TIME. Not from "company time". What employee would stay at work for 4 hours overtime just to work on a side-project now? And they dont for a good point : there is barely any (real) recognition of your (hard) work anymore, any incentive, any bonus, and anything you might come up with will be "stolen" by the company which will take all benefit from your ideas and work. The guy at least received 25.000$ - with the value it meant back then.

@@justalonesoul5825 Yes,, but at a time when the idea of noncompat agreements or nondisclosure agreements meant noting. They were ALL working for AMERICA and the possiblity of that not being the case didn't even enter into it. They KNEW 100% that the "free time" was still well spent that it was helping the USA.

@@justalonesoul5825 i'd like to add to that that back then people usualy didnt work a 40+ week. at least if my local old people are to be believed

awesome

I think a German company still makes the L version. My country bought some as we only had the B versions.

How about an ai version ? It needs a Npu to distinguish the difference between flare and the plane engine.

@@ps3301 AIM-9X is plenty advanced. Look into 'HOBS', and extrapolate a little about what that requires, how you would have to target lock with a missile which is inside an internal weapons bay, and what it means capability-wise. High+low wavelength IR helps differentiate planes from flares, and inertial modeling helps really zero things in.

@@shaider1982 Only upgrade and support of the L-1 variant which is used also in Hungary.

I speculate that the XP-55 Ascender is also an... ascended dad joke. (It was called the “ass ender” because of the pusher design.)

@@Justanotherconsumer Wait until you hear about the Type 57 Su Gon

The dad joke has hit the big time. Actually I did read a couple of weeks ago that, though the dad joke has a certain groan factor to it, it has been shown that it helps children understand how words work

Hahaha. I didn't know the ARM standed for something. Very good.

Don't know if this is in the same category, but another classic is on MRE heaters, where you're instructed to lean it against a "rock or something". When they were coming up with the instructions and were wondering what to put in the diagram someone said "I don't know, let's make it a rock or something". So they wrote down "rock or something" and it stuck :)

are u guys rich ? ahhah

I grew up in Ridgecrest! Well, till I was seven, then we moved to southern Utah. It's great to read your story! Have a great day!

A childhood friend of mine worked for NavAir China Lake as an engineer for a few years. She eventually left the job because she couldn't stand the geographic isolation. But it sounded like she did get her share of "blowing shit up" while there.

I was a Physicist in the Sensors and Platforms branch (code 3941) in the 80's and early 90's at China Lake. I still love "blowing shit up"!

Too bad he didn't know about islam.

Yeah, loved that fin stabilisation. Gyroscopic effect done so cheaply. Guess they should have had a 'failsafe' sytem installed, to auto-detonate after launch after so many seconds, then the 'capture by stuck in plane' episode would never have happened and given them a longer time with an edge on the 'enemy'. But, what were the odds? As it was, the 'enemy' would have eventually collected enough debris pieces to come up with their own design. Just not so swiftly.

They’re not quite so simple anymore. I’ve spoken with some engineers working on the X series and the inertial sensing equipment used now is quite complex and expensive. The lack of simplicity caused some problems with implementation onto the F22. The missile swings out after arming and prior to deployment on the F22, but this caused a lot of error in the internal measurement unit which was designed for straight launch. It actually took several design changes and a whole new variant for the AIM 9x to be able to be fired off of the moving launch system. Prior to the updates, only an older and simpler version could be used.

@@David-yo5ws Sure I read / saw somewhere that the soviets stole one from an airbase and drove out with it in a car before posting it back to the motherland. A quick google search and here you go en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Ramminger

@@adamhale6672 this is also one of the big reasons they opted out if carrying the 9x internally on the F-35.

Pretty sure he said "generated its own power", not "generated it's own power".

i love the sidewinder growl lmao. i used to play ace combat 4 a lot as a kid and loved using them

The newest version drones out a really loud, stereotypically gay, "Yoooooohoooooo!"

@@rafetizer I heard this in Slim Pickens then a seductive "Yoooooooo-hooooo~"

@@phantomaviator1318 LOL!! 👍

@@soulsphere9242 no, the growl is when it detects a heat source and the stronger the source louder the growl. I spent 20 years of my life maintaining the Weapons Control System of F4 aircraft. That's radar, Missile firing, weapons release, gun sight. It's a 11 month tech school. I have ran hundreds of Sparrow, Falcon and Sidewinder tests. Falcon firing system had about 40 relays for each station that had to energize in a specific order. And had 2 test sets MITS and MATS. I have used a flashlight to test a sidewinder.

True. Watching your videos now is mandatory to me.

They really are excellent.

The best shirts as well!

Some of the best shirts too!! ;)

I know right, 1 minute 55 in and the content is just beginning, wowwwwww ...

All I can think of when I saw that was a B-52 dogfighting and using AIM-9's

@@Someguy0013 AIM-9s on the wings and in the belly. Try dodge them all.

@@Joshua_N-A Laughs in Old Dog. Get in Muck, we're bombing Russian Space lasers.

@@Joshua_N-A lmao that would be insane

@@jacobblair6181 the sound of beeping alarm will give them PTSD.

In the words of Ron Burgundy, “I don’t believe you.”

I was wondering if anyone was really inside the red striped airplanes.

Our father worked on the sidewinder and our family lived in wherry housing just off base. That place was full of secrecy and lore like area 51. Always wanted to connect with school friends but left and joined the navy. So many of my crazy friends did crazy things out there making me feel that area (NOTS) China lake was jinksed and seldom returned to visit my past on relatives.

My father went to get smokes in the 80's. He's likely working on something super top secret because no one has heard from him.

My father was a model maker machinist at Aims lab. Most families never knew what their parents were making. Such pride and patriotism. I can remember when pres Kennedy came to visit the base...what a parade and sensation that day.

"I don't got tone!!!!!!"

Interesting fact from the development of the sidewinder. Originally, the missile had a gauge, a simple amp meter that showed how good of a signal the missile was getting. It was the test pilot of the program that suggested they rig it to a sound instead, so the pilot didn't have to look inside the cockpit to see if the missile was locked on or not. That pilot was Wally Schirra, better known for being a Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Astronaut.

@Will.J only one way to find out!

@Will.J I missed the boat! I knew about BTC back in 2012 but never made the plunge

@Will.J I hope you're not here to flog dogecoin

The Pheonix was an excellent, battle tested weapon. While we did not do much with it, The Iranians devastated Iraq with it. It's believed they killed as many as 160 aircraft with the F-14 and Pheonix. In fact, it is believed that the Iraqi experience fighting against Iranian F-14's are why they ran for the hills during Desert Storm every time an F-14 lit up it's radar.

The AIM-47 version kinda removed any & all "hit probability" concerns ;)

@@Elthenar Honestly they ran for the hills vs any US aircraft. The amount of ECM over Iraq in DS was such that they rarely had any functional sensors (apart from fuzz busters which were in a constant state of going off).

The sparrow was just as bad on the F4 during Vietnam...

@@kathrynck They ran from muuuuuuuuuuch further distance when they detected F14 radars..

Or when the project hasn't even been approved...but is started anyway by a company with a good grasp on reality..as with the Hawker company developing the Hurricane BEFORE getting an Air Ministry contract for it...

He must have had considerable pull with the right peope. Doing a side project against the direction of your supervisors is a great way to lose a job.

You only hear about the good ones. I’m sure more than a few have resulted in bankruptcy and heaps of trash.

Waiting on the complainant to reply to sort it out but it will be back one way or another.

@@CuriousDroid oh yes... im not even really into that stuff and i loved it. I am so glad i watched it before it was blocked. Really love this channel Droid. Amazing work. :D.

It was blocked? I'm getting very upset with this policy.

@@CuriousDroid ehh Mr. Shillito! A heads up my friend, a typo in the description... something like "killed off by the US navy, kept alive but (instead of "by") the engineers" or something of the sort. Just trying to help man. =)

@@Kabup2 I'm just hearing form this too. They need to quit pandering to big corporations who flag anything in their sights, and boost channels like CD that are a value adder, not another mind numbing ticktock'er zombie.

The problem with the Falcon, so they said, was that it just didn't want to hurt anybody.

Probably the cultural setting and the pure strength of aesthetics of the photos

@@blinimationstudios1717 yes

Me too, but in the air force.

Did he ever get back to you?

@@Shinzon23 If he did it would have shown right here. He doesn't have time to respond, he's got a million followers.

IIRC they needed coolant gas to cool the seeker head, making heat stand out more and allowing them to lock/track the source. There's different ways it was done, and one is the coolant was stored in the aircraft in individual tanks/canisters that were connected to each missile. This meant once you went "hot" to attempt a lock, you only had about 10s before the coolant ran out and that missile was dead, so you had to switch to another one. The AF and Navy used different coolant systems, and different AIM-9 models until they standardized later. So they're not all the same, and they got rid of the need for coolant at different times. This is why not all the older AIM-9s after the "B" can be used universally, they use different systems depending on whether they're "Air Force" or "Navy" configured missiles. For instance the AIM-9C, 9D, and 9G are US Navy missiles, while the AIM-9E and 9J are US Air Force missiles. The AF really tried to make the AIM-4 "Falcon" a thing but it just couldn't compare, because of that just like when they made it most breakthroughs upgrading the AIM-9 came from the Navy. (Also the AIM-9C is a pretty unique Sidewinder as its the only one that's not an IR missile (Heat Seeker). They're actually modified to be SARH (RADAR Guided) missiles like the AIM-7 Sparrow, because the Sparrow was too big for the Navys F-8 fighter but they still wanted a Radar missile). The FIM-92 "Stinger" MANPAD, also has this problem for those that didn't know. There's a coolant cartridge in the grip needed to cool the seeker, and once you go hot you've only got 7-10s before it runs out and you need a new one. This was never really fixed because new ones haven't been made since the early 2000's and they were supposed to be replaced by a new system soon anyways, however the war in Ukraine forced them to start assembling more from remaining parts and keep it in service. For context, the missile is so old and close to being phased out that some components literally don't exist anymore. So once existing stock runs out more can't be made, which is why they're currently redesigning the Stinger so they can switch to new parts that're still made. Last fact: Modern IR missiles like the AIM-9L, 9X, R-60M, and later Stingers are all-aspect meaning they can lock, launch, and track from any angle of the target, yet they're still Heat Seekers. How then you might ask, if they can't see the hot engine or exhaust? Modern seekers are so sensitive, they can lock on to the heat created by the friction of the plane moving through the air.

I was told it was because pit vipers hunt in the dark by detecting heat with those pits.

Yep. You are correct on both accounts. The mojave green species is specific to the valley there

It's a rare case of a perfect name. A heat-seeking missile known for taking a snaky trajectory is named after a heat-sensing predatory snake that gyrates along the sand.

IYAAYAS

comment etiqute

Yeah, the good old days.

Yeah, right. This is the problem with anyone with a phone being able to comment. Just strap close to a couple hundred pounds to each handlebar eh? How's that singe on your face from the rocket motor blasting you?

@@climberbob1 You're probably too young to know about this but bicycles were built far sturdier in my day. Entirely unlike the paper-thin dreck they pump out now. Sure, they were heavier but they could handle a bit of extra weight too!

There’s a pretty good channel called military history in a minute that does just what it says on the tin, and they’ve done a minute and a half video on it to give you an overview of it :)

Sadly, that principle seems lost on modern engineers, who seem bound and determined to make everything as complex as possible. I was a Marine Corps aircraft mechanic and loved working on the A-4 Skyhawk, Ed Heinemann's real-life demonstration of the KISS principle.

The F-35 follows the opposite principle. A trillion bucks for a plane that can barely fly - sometimes.

@@cybervigilante it certainly does seem that way. Part of it is the multi-service aspect with the A B C variants that were supposed to save on development and support costs. I suspect the other aspect is a certain amount of scope creep and possibly specifications that work against each other.

I mean it was still incredibly advanced, especially some of the gyro-based systems it used - they just chose the right path and compared to the other programs, seemed incredibly basic but also logical. Like why wouldn't you just "do it this way" automatically?

@@cybervigilante This is where people don't understand what the hell they're talking about. The F-35 is literally the KISS version of the JSF competition. Look at the X-32 for comparison. Boeing didn't care how complex the X-32 was, just so long as they could offer it cheaper than the competition. The F-35 looks the way it does because it specifically chose a conservative, simpler design. Also the F-35 has a high MCR than the F-16 right now, so uh... barely fly is a bit off the mark.

Aren't AIM-9s still super light weapons of last resort? The newer ones are way more agile than the AMRAAM.

@@fim-43redeye31 They do work, absolutely. They just don't have as advanced onboard systems as the 120.

@@jebbroham1776 Definitely true. I heard the 9X upgrades are supposed to give it similar capability to a 120, apart from range. The 9X Block II has datalink, and the Block III *was* going to have 60% more range in comparison, but they canceled it.

There are a few vids on here. It is called 'expanding rod' Fascinating how it works.

Millennium 7, Curious Droid, and Dark Skies are the best (in order, based on my own opinion).

Don't forget Hedy Lamar's contribution to them co-inventing frequency band skipping - current day WiFi!

So simple it costs a mere $262.000 per unit

@@NuclearTopSpot I don't know how the defence industry get away with it! They seem to charge whatever they want (and I'm sure that the politicians don't get anything out of it!😂😂)

The Falcon proves you should always remember Sod Law. If it can go wrong it will go wrong. Especially if there is more that can go wrong.

@@NuclearTopSpot if they didn't let congressmen embezzle money, they'd get shut down and get blacklisted from ever holding a job in the defense industry again

@@oxcart4172 politicians do get things out of it. they give money to contractors to build things in their state

By few years back do you mean 40 years?

@@tarunbasra8230 More like 39 but who's counting 😉.

Yes. I have.

they are not turbines. they don't compress any air or fluid and they do not generate power or useful work. All they do is accumulate energy, which just happens to be gyroscopic , and while that's functional, it doesn't deliver "work" or "energy"

@@starga-fr7qx They are indeed turbines. They convert energy from a streaming medium to rotation, that's what actual turbines do. You're thinking of a turbojet engine that is often referred to as a turbine, but the compressor in those is actually called compressor. The gyro turbines here indeed generate useful work, or else they wouldn't have been installed there. Even though it's just momentum and torque, but that's definitively a purpose.

Let's all just agree to call it a turbine of the fly-wheel variety.

@@gustavgnoettgen Well no, they don't convert anything.. They don't do anything but what the wind does to em.. the wind pushes them, and they spin because of it. All it does.. is windmill. a turbine, has to "do" something with the energy put in to it.. it has an "output". By your reckoning, you could equally call one of those beach windmills for children a windmill.. it does the same thing.. But nobody does that, we don't call those turbines do we.. why not? Answer : be cause they do not have any useful output

@@starga-fr7qx We do call them turbines. If you blow on it and it turns it is a turbine. And the useful output is gyroscopic stabilization.

Not just Raytheon. Any company in the Defense business. Required by the government.