AIM-7 SPARROW: Development And Evolution Of A Pioneering But Troubled Weapon System

USAF F4 WSO, 1700+hrs in F4C,D,E, combat in Vietnam, Fighter Weapons School graduate: This is an excellent treatise on the AIM-7. I can expand on the area you excluded-aircrew training. It was terrible. Once out of a training squadron, there was little follow-on teaching as hardly anyone knew how the missile worked or what the best tactics were. It wasn't until the mid-70s that we began to get a handle on how to employ the E3 version correctly. In a maneuvering fight max range rule of thumb was 6 miles in the front quarter, 4 miles in the beam quarter, and 2 miles in the rear. Min range was 2 miles in the front, 1 mile on the beam, and 3k feet in the rear. A 6 mile front launch meant that the target could not escape the missile. Of course one still had the fuze issues etc. The slat F4E featured a major cockpit modernization that put the missile/gun switches on the throttles and stick and were a great improvement. However, we still had the APQ-120 radar, pulse only, with a nasty altitude line issue caused by an ogive shaped antenna caused by the installation of the gun. One more thing, it might have been nice to mention Ritchie's WSO, Capt. Charles DeBellevue :)

"The radar, it turned out, was not a great deal of use against the backdrop of the sea, which is a prominent feature in naval combat." I literally LOL'ed.

I loaded a lot of AIM-7s on F-15s... There was thing that the pickle button had to be pressed and held until the rocket motor fired. There is what was called a missile motor fire wire. That wire was connected to the LAU-106 and would uncoil during ejection. The idea is for the rocket motor to fire at the moment the wire was fully extended. A short pickle would cause the missile to fall away harmlessly, as described in the video. Funny story-- I was covering a launch of an F-15 one day and an inert missile with no wings or fins activated on the aircraft. All 4 wing wells cocked like it was trying to do it's post-launch 45 degree roll. Shut the jet down, downloaded the missile. I was leaning on the missile whilst it was on a trailer, waiting on ammo to come get it, and it activated again. The hydraulics are LOUD. Scared the absolute crap out of me and I took off running like it was a live missile. Everyone around laughed at me running from an inert missile with blue bands all over it. I ran like it counted and didn't care what they thought.

Over 40 years past I was trained to pull functional checks on the AIM-7 system. I did tens of dozens of those in the USAF. Generally, it took us about 10 odd minutes per station to run a functional check. There were four stations. Between set up, the check, running the check lists, and close up the whole process was 45 - 90 minutes, generally took up a little more than an hour on average.

The description of the motor fire function is a little off. Ejecting the missile doesn't "pull a pin". There's a cable on the aft ejector foot that extends from a reel as the foot extends. A microswitch closes at the correct extension distance and if the timing is correct, sends voltage down the cable to light the motor. We had a test set that used compressed nitrogen instead of the explosive cartridges to fire the feet down and it recorded that the correct timing and extensions were achieved. It wouldn't fire the motor if the aft foot extended more quickly than the forward foot. You don't want to light the motor if the missile is pointing up at the aircraft! Maybe the cold-soaking of the ejector carts was causing timing issues? There's also a circuit breaker in the cockpit that needs to be set to allow motor fire voltage. We would pull that breaker when loading for safety. The RIO was supposed to push it back in once they were in the air. At least once during a training missile shoot, that didn't happen and the missile just dropped into the ocean after it was ejected. Sad RIO face...

Very nice. IIRC, AIM-7M was born out of Britain's Skyflash, itself a development of AIM-7 as sold to Britain, which pioneered the inverse monopulse system. It would have been nice to cover Skyflash and also the Italian Aspide in this video, although I do appreciate your coverage of Iranian experience.

yes! your missile development videos are my favorite! you have no clue how entertaining your mini documentaries are, keep it up man 🤙

I think that laypeople often underestimate the significance of inverse-monopulse guidance as introduced in Aspide, Skyflash, and finally the AIM-7M “monopulse Sparrow”. I was happy to hear you describe the limitations of the pre-M variants’ conical scan seekers and the improvements in AIM-7M. It was basically a completely different missile in terms of effectiveness and ECM resistance. The AIM-7R’s miniature IR seeker reportedly lives on in the Navy’s SM-2 MR Block IIIB SAM, which remains in service to this day. That missile is known to have dual-mode SARH/IR terminal guidance based on the AIM-7R’s design. And then there is also the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM), which uses a different airframe and motor and serves as a critical layer of the USN’s area air defenses. With that said, the latest ESSM block II basically mates an AMRAAM seeker to the new airframe and motor, leaving basically no Sparrow components beyond the name.

Great job, loaded many AIM-7s while serving as Aviation Ordnanceman in the U.S Navy.

A 1 hour deep dive on the Sparrow shortly after the Phantom drops? Excellent work- can't wait to watch this over tea.

2 points. Your comments about being transported (beat up) on unapproved roads in unsprung vehicles (26:11) really illuminated the issue for me. And 26:32 as a retired member of an un-named armed force in the Department of the Navy, I was in awe of how every square millimeter of ships are used and the amount of honest to goodness work the Navy do, around the clock, under immense pressure, in (to put it mildly) less than ideal conditions. This photo exemplifies the voodoo wrench turners do underway. Also, if anyone ever accuses me of giving the Navy a compliment I will deny it. Semper Fi.

During my time in the USAF as an avionics tech on F-101 and F-106 interceptors at Tyndall AFB, Fl. in the late 1970s, we once had a group of brand new F-15A Eagles down here to use our Gulf missile range. Two Eagles had serious failures. One was evident looking down the line of aircraft , and seeing one's nose out of line. Pilot seriously over-geed it and the entire cockpit/nose section "bent" downwards several degrees. It was flown back to Langley AFB. The second Eagle had a couple holes in it's belly! It seems when the pilot fire the starboard forward Sparrow, the missile fired and launched, taking pieces of the mounts with it! The plane was trucked back to Langley AFB. Teething troubles on a new plane I guess. 😅

Dude, I love your videos! I haven't watched TV in over ten years, now. But if stuff like this was on there, high quality, great and normal-speaking narration, in-depth, I would totally watch it still. You're amazing!

Outstanding presentation sir! I have a soft spot for the Sparrow. I started my engineering career as a junior engineer/technician in 1978, working for General Dynamics Pomona division. GD was second source for Sparrow at the time, and I worked in the test equipment group in support of production and field maintenance requirements. In that group, I worked on Sparrow, Standard, Phalanx, Stinger, and DIVADS programs. My senior project was an airframe pressure/vacuum test stand for Sparrow. Graduated from Cal Poly Pomona as a ME in 1980 and continued to work for GD for another year before going on to work in testing for nearly all of the SoCal based aerospace companies at one time or another...chasing contracts =) Retired in 2020.

Very informative. Reminds me of the torpedoes in the early years of world war 2. Finally they worked out the reasons and finally had a workable weapon

Watching this video made me remember my days doing Radar Cal. Great times on Phantoms.

A year in the making... What an effort. Thank you so much for this video. Very insightful and entertaining. We've received some Sparrows recently. They were integrated into soviet era SAM systems, resulting into so-called FrankenSAMs. 🇺🇦✌️☮️

Understood this was a lot of work but, this is a fascinating story that really hasn't been compiled like this before. I'm fascinated by Vietnam era and prior electronic warfare.

This is so fascinating. I had no idea an active seeker head was experimented with. I was able to shoot both a AIM-9M and AIM-7M. The Sparrow warhead looks like a 500# bomb going off when it fuses.

An excellent dive into a much maligned AAM. Just a note the Iranian Tomcats carried the AIM-7E4 as this was designed to work specifically with the F-14...