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The original Sparrow I and aborted Sparrow II became the AIM-7A and AIM-7B, despite both being out of service. The -6, -6a, and -6b became the AIM-7C , AIM-7D , and AIM-7E respectively. 25,000 AIM-7Es were produced and saw extensive use during the Vietnam War , where its performance was considered disappointing.
Operation Bolo was a United States Air Force mission during the Vietnam War, considered to be a successful combat ruse. [1]The mission was a response to the heavy losses sustained during the Operation Rolling Thunder aerial-bombardment campaign of 1966, during which Vietnam People's Air Force fighter jets had evaded U.S. escort fighters and attacked U.S. bombers flying predictable routes.
The Skyflash, or Sky Flash in marketing material, was a medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile derived from the US AIM-7 Sparrow missile and carried by Royal Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms and Tornado F3s, Italian Aeronautica Militare and Royal Saudi Air Force Tornados and Swedish Flygvapnet Saab Viggens.
Following the Korean War the United States military adopted the view that airborne radar and air-to-air missiles made guns and dogfighting obsolete. The radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow would destroy enemy aircraft beyond visual range, while the radar-guided/infrared AIM-4 Falcon (United States Air Force (USAF) only) and infrared AIM-9 Sidewinder would destroy enemy aircraft at close range.
One of the first such examples was the Soviet Union R-40 air-to-air missiles used in MiG-25P introduced in service in 1970 and RAF's Skyflash missile introduced in 1978, an adaptation of the AIM-7 Sparrow that replaced the original Raytheon seeker with a monopulse model from Marconi, followed by a very similar conversion by Selenia for the ...
An AIM-7 variant called Sparrow II was the first attempt at producing a semi-active radar homing missile, however the first air-to-air missile to introduce a terminal active seeker operationally was the AIM-54 Phoenix [4] carried by the F-14 Tomcat, which entered service in 1972. This relieved the launch platform of the need to illuminate the ...
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The Rockwell XFV-12 was a prototype supersonic United States Navy fighter which was built in 1977. The XFV-12 design attempted to combine the Mach 2 speed and AIM-7 Sparrow armament of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II in a VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) fighter for the small Sea Control Ship which was under study at the time.