RIM-174 as Long Range AAM?

jasonfreeland

New Member
De lurking here for a question. I have been running this thought around my head for quite some time and this seemed to be the place to ask about it. What is the feasibility of using the RIM-174 (SM-6) as an air to air weapon, minus its Mk 72 booster? From research, I found the missile itself weighs about 1400 pounds (minus the booster). This is well within limits of the aircraft pylons that could be expected to carry it (like F35/F18).

Further research has told me that the Mk 72 burns for six seconds. I can't find any data as to altitude or speed at burnout and frankly don't expect to. This leads to the big question of can the missile maintain its long range by launching at 30 to 40,000 feet and 500 knots as to a surface launch by booster?

The last main relevance is guidance. They have already demonstrated NIF-CA guidance on the missile, so it should be useable as is post launch. If a set of hard points can be added like the Standard ARM (AGM-78), I think it would work. It's even similarly sized to the ARM.

The need for this missile is to target C4ISR and tanker assets, should stealth not work as well as the US hopes it does. I don't see an enormous production run on these as they are pretty specialty munitions, but the need is there. Also I can't post links to back up my numbers, due to post count, but they should be easily verifiable.

Let me know what you think of the proposal, it's not something I read somewhere, just brain storming. Thanks.
 

Boagrius

Well-Known Member
My 2c:

Could the US field an "AIM174"? Sure. Would they? I doubt it. The whole premise of such a big and bulky weapon flies in the face of the VLO w/ internal weapons carriage concept that looks set to dominate US doctrine in this domain. All indications so far are that "stealth" works rather well. When you combine this observation with the already significant reach of the existing AIM120D against a lumbering target like an AWACS or tanker I suspect the penalties to signature management would outweigh the benefits.

If the US were to pursue a longer ranging air to air missile than AMRAAM I'd say it's more likely to look something like the MBDA Meteor - long legs without sacrificing the ability to fit inside an F22/35s weapons bays.
 
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jasonfreeland

New Member
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Have you seen any reliable range information on the Meteor? What little I have been able to come up with is similar to the limited info on the AIM-120D.
 

Boagrius

Well-Known Member
Have you seen any reliable range information on the Meteor? What little I have been able to come up with is similar to the limited info on the AIM-120D.
Difficult to get reliable range data on any contemporary AAM TBH. Hunch says Meteor might be longer legged or at least have better endgame performance due to that throttleable ramjet.

Would be speculating pretty wildly to say much more than that. The quoted max ranges are generally meaningless - it's the size of the No Escape Zone (NEZ) that is more informative, but that info isn't publically available for either missile.

My best guess would be that the fun starts at around 20-30nm for either missile against a fighter type target with a head on aspect, comparable airspeed (say, high subsonic) and altitude (say ~30k feet). You'd get more juice out of a faster and higher launch of course, and could shoot from further again if the target was a fat lumbering ISR asset.

VERY ballpark figures from me though I must stress. I have no doubt there are others on the forum with pertinent experience, but as they say "those that talk don't know and those that know can't talk" haha.
 
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