Forum: Technology

Last edited by desmo on Jun 16, 2005 - 04:23 AM; edited 1 time in total

Hey. This is gonna sound funny, but this idea came to me in my dreams. It is a rear facing missle and firing. It would solve the problem of not being able to shoot someone who is behind you. It would be more like a aerial mine than a sidewinder or something like that. It makes sense to me that missles would progress in the direction tho; first guns used to be foward facing, then they put rear turrets on planes. Has this idea been thought up of before? Is it plausible? I've got papers somewhere in this pile I call my room, I can go look for it and type about this idea in greater detail. I've also got some other ideas I've dreamed up so if this has merit to it, I'd like to share them with whoever can make them happen Razz

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ever see the Movie "Fire Fox" also Rumor has it that some of the BIG SU-37s have a rear radar for directing rear Firing MINES, or Missiles.. Of course if you have Stealth this is ALL pretty useless!!!

Problem with rear firing missiles. It is the relative speed of the weapon. If the platform is moving forward at 600 knots then the missile has to slow down that much before it reaches a forward velocity. Hence the missile is flying backwards for a bit if you can get it away from a rail. Even with an ejector rack you have that forward velocity to overcome. Thrust vectoring would be a requirement at the least but a missile going so slow at the beginning of its launch would be next to useless, it can't maneuver fast enough to hit an oncoming a/c. The missile has to have forward energy and tons of it to beat a modern fighter.

Well, it wouldn't work on any of our fighters due to the fact that none of them have a full 360 degree radar coverage, so they would never be able to lock a target at their 6 o'clock. If aircraft like the F-16, F-15, etc. were able to use "aerial mines" though, they would have to be unguided, and would very likely miss their target. But hey, it was a cool idea anyway though. Smile

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

Although who says they have to be radar guided? If its a last ditch, close in defence system, it could be an IIR seeker. You still have the problem of going -500mph (relative to the missile).

Or how about a claymore like device facing to the rear? Who cares about killing the enemy fighter on your tail if you can just FOD his engine? Of course Russian types seem more FOD tolerant, but can they ingest 1/4" steel ball bearings? Twisted Evil

This is all moot though because you could never, ever convince a fighter jock that a bandit would ever get on his tail! Very Happy

Forum Veteran Joined: Apr 16, 2005 - 03:16 PM Posts: 800

agilefalcon16 wrote:

Well, it wouldn't work on any of our fighters due to the fact that none of them have a full 360 degree radar coverage, so they would never be able to lock a target at their 6 o'clock. If aircraft like the F-16, F-15, etc. were able to use "aerial mines" though, they would have to be unguided, and would very likely miss their target. But hey, it was a cool idea anyway though. Smile

AMRAAMs can now be guided with GPS data coming from off board sensors. So theoreticaly you can engage a target behind you. As far as I know the AIM-120D/MIDS combination should be able to do that. Don't know about previous versions of the AMRAAM..

AA-8s have a very High Off Bore site capability and they are OLD....

Keep in mind: The target is also going forward, so we have more or less the same closure rate. Exact same physics as rear gun turret. And also, a missile from that close would be near impossible to dodge even with lightnignt reflexes... would be a NASTY surprise.

Problem is the missiles can't maneuver with out forward velocities. It would take an enormous amount of thrust and that would mean a HUGE missile.

That or a >light< missle. Thats how they measured the F-15 vs the F-16. They made the F-15 fast and powerfull by making it big and stuffing two big engines in it. They made the F-16 fast and powerfull by making it small and light and sticking a big engine in it.

Burn time dictates the size requirement of missile. Not the amount of thrust. It would take an very long burn time to over come the A/C vector and then start on its own. It just won't work with todays technology.

WWII bombers and even early versions of the B-52 had a tail gunner or radar controlled tail gun. Next generation would be some kind of energy (laser) weapon, where speed is not an issue.

Huge difference in a gun vs a missile. The Bullet is at peak velocity when leaving the barrel, around 3500FPS, while a missile is much much slower. Peak speeds are found mid range on a missile where the motor burns out then it becomes a guided bullet. Bullets shooting a slow moving fighter a/c from slow moving a/c really hit very few targets in WWII. While missiles have a much greater PK per round. The fact that missile velocity take time to build up prevents it from being effective.

How about just a few small WP rockets that shoot straight back in an emergency? Certainly would cause a pursuer to think twice the first couple of times it happened. Razz

Thanks for the replies guys. Yea I knew that the missle would have to go x to zero, then back up to speed again (x=current airspeed) if it were to be like a foward facing missle. one of the solutions I came up with was to make it more like an aerial mine and it would just use thrust vectoring to engage the target. Keep in mind that if this is a WVR fight, the bandit is going to be going to continue moving foward behind you. That means that you just have to make sure the missle will vector with the bandit; it does not have to get up to speed to chase it as it should be on a collision course with the missle/mine. I really wish I found this piece of paper I had because it has alot of ideas regarding this.

When I said that machine guns went on to face the rear, I was just illustrating the fact that other weapons went from foward to rear facing...It seemed to be the evolution of air weapons.

So, this rear facing missle/mine would not actually need to get from current airspeed to zero then up to a suitable speed to work. It just needs to vector itself to the bandits course. As for targeting, maybe it could use some kind of logic computer and motion sensor to track the course. EDIT: The GPS idea was something that I had written about, I forgot about that Razz

. It would have to be something where it wouldn't be too heavy and could predict the path of the bandit. Can the missle continue to move at the same foward speed while going up down or left and right while not being excessively large?

SUMMARY: (if you dont wanna read all that) ^
Basically, the missle/mine would just position itself (using the least amount of fuel) so that the bandit would run into it instead of chasing it down like a normal missle. It would have its own internal guidance system that would make use of thrust vectoring to make sure the bandit ran into it.

I'm not a pilot (YET ;P ) so I don't really know the ins and outs of weapon systems and avionics. I really do think this could work with some good engineering and thought. Once again, thank you all for your replies. I'm going to look for that notebook with all my ideas on it because I have a ton more. I have an especially interesting one regarding engine designs

Forum: Technology

An idea: rear-facing missiles