Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

See title. Which aircraft, which missile, which radar, what target?

Any ideas.

Any info. on the longest SAM kill would also be appreciated.

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mcraptor wrote:

See title. Which aircraft, which missile, which radar, what target?

Any ideas.

Any info. on the longest SAM kill would also be appreciated.

Not that I actually know the answer, but I would suspect that the U-2 Incident from 1960 is right up there for longest range SAM kill.

The Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 brought down by the S-200 (SA-5) at 198 miles would be the longest SAM kill.

The longest verifiable A-A kill I can find is 9km (Gulf of Sidra 1989 F-14 vs MiG-23, AIM-7). Must be longer than that.

(Not including aniti-satellite 555km.)

I would say the Iranians would have a good shout at this with their AIM-54s.

What have they ever killed in live combat?

mcraptor wrote:

What have they ever killed in live combat?

Iran-Irak war 1980-1988. The F-14:s are pledged to have shot down about a dozen fighters from Irak using their phoenix missiles, just in the first two days of battle.

But I have no numbers so it is impossible to know if this is "the longest range A-A kill"

my 5 cent

mcraptor wrote:

What have they ever killed in live combat?

The problem with verifying any air to air victories in the Iran Iraq war is immense, the numbers were massaged by the Iranian regime for propaganda purposes so it`s near impossible to find any reliable figures but generally it is thought that only a small number of F-14s actually flew during the entire conflict.
Iran bought 100s of AIM-54s, in the link I provide it is suggested that Hughes technicians sabotaged a small number of AIM-54 rounds just before they left which is interesting. One caveat is that the article in the link below was written by a Tom Cooper and a lot of people have taken his book on the F-14s role in the war with a large pinch of salt,

As Linkomart suggested the IRAF was supposed to have killed quite a few Mirages and Migs of all types including Mig-25s air to air with some sources claiming as many as 90 AIM-54s were fired in 8 years of war with Iraq.

The most successful F-14 combat pilot of all time is apparently an Iranian with somewhere between 9-11 kills.
I think it is highly likely Iranian Tomcats got "some" kills with the AIM-54 but I don`t think anyone will ever know exact details.

Even if a lot of this is correct/true, there is still little evidence to suggest that the Iranian F-14 kills were done at extreme ranges. The one story I hear often is how an IRAF F-14 fired one AIM-54 at a close formation of Iraqi fighters , destroying one aircraft, with the explosion taking out at least 2 more aircraft in the flight. It`s a nice fantasy if not true and awesome if it is, unless you were an Iraqi Mirage driver.

All above info I got from the following site. if it is anything it is entertaining.
http://www.airspacemag.com/military-avi ... ncats.html

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

What is the longest range A-A kill in operatinal history?