WI 'Dogfight' Red Top and/or Matra R530?

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Rule of cool

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In response to the demands of the Vietnam War RoE forcing 'dogfights' the US developed the AIM9E version of the Sidewinder and the AIM7E-2 version of the Sparrow, while the AIM9D had started production in 1965.

WI if the British and/or French found themselves in a similar situation as the US in the same timeframe, could their missiles (Red Top, R530 in SARH & IR) be quickly adapted to perform better in dogfights? I presume Taildog and Magic start development too late to count in this scenario.

What would they need to have done? Would they be effective?
 
Speaking only for the Matra, but during its long conflict over Angola the SAAF never once deployed its Matra R530 SARH sticking only to IR R550s even though they had a large R530 SARH stock. The depot maintenace demands were so high that missile reliability suffered majorly if not done. Thus the R530s were never deployed and used on operations as there were no facilities to service them at operational bases.

So I suspect the French would have suffered quite a bit too in a similar situation as US had in Vietnam. Part of the lessons learned there for the US was how to store and transport missiles to ensure their condition and reliability is maintained as best possible.
 
Reading Air Fan back in the day, R530 was not very good. One turned a barrel roll around its Mirage F1 launcher. The pilot was delighted.
 
The Sparrow used continuous wave guidance and the Lightning didn't have a CW emitter, so the Sparrow seeker is out. In any case the likes of the radar Red Top and the Red Top mk2 with liquid rocket were more about increasing engagement ranges and I don't know how useful they'd be in close fighter vs fighter combat. Certainly the SARH R530 was almost useless in the 6 day war, with long warm-up time, unreliable and difficult to get a lock with ground clutter.

Does anyone know anything about the IR R530?
 
BLACK_MAMBA said:
Speaking only for the Matra, but during its long conflict over Angola the SAAF never once deployed its Matra R530 SARH sticking only to IR R550s even though they had a large R530 SARH stock. The depot maintenace demands were so high that missile reliability suffered majorly if not done. Thus the R530s were never deployed and used on operations as there were no facilities to service them at operational bases.

So I suspect the French would have suffered quite a bit too in a similar situation as US had in Vietnam. Part of the lessons learned there for the US was how to store and transport missiles to ensure their condition and reliability is maintained as best possible.
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I wonder what kind of modification had been done to the French Navy F-8E's radar.

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F-8-com-missil-R530.jpg
 
Red Top is fast, with a very heavy warhead (68lb) for an IR missile and (conditional) all-aspect capability. It ought to do well, at least on paper. On the other hand, its primary design purpose was as a bomber killer, and the Firestreak/Red Top family was the only Western Cold War service AAM that never got a chance to prove how good it was - or wasn't - in the school of hard knocks.

IIRC the R530 has precisely ONE kill to its name, though I don't know how many were fired in combat.
 
pathology_doc said:
Red Top is fast, with a very heavy warhead (68lb) for an IR missile and (conditional) all-aspect capability. It ought to do well, at least on paper. On the other hand, its primary design purpose was as a bomber killer, and the Firestreak/Red Top family was the only Western Cold War service AAM that never got a chance to prove how good it was - or wasn't - in the school of hard knocks.

IIRC the R530 has precisely ONE kill to its name, though I don't know how many were fired in combat.
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Information is scarce, but IIUC the Red Top had a slow warm-up time like the R530, which is a limitation in combat. Other than that it's large engagement envelope would be an asset I presume.
 
red admiral said:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...erformance-all-aspect-capability.32917/page-2

As per the performance diagrams here, on paper it appears near useless Vs fighter sized targets, or any targets undertaking moderate manoeuvres. Large warhead was to compensate for large miss distance.
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So the same as the AIM7 and AIM9 in Vietnam and the R530 in the Mid East.

In order to improve the Red Top for dogfight a shorter warm-up time and better performance against maneuvreing targets is needed.
 
Rule of cool said:
Information is scarce, but IIUC the Red Top had a slow warm-up time like the R530, which is a limitation in combat. Other than that it's large engagement envelope would be an asset I presume.
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It probably would be as it should be able to launch and fire before the two fighters entered the merge. A seeker upgrade would definitely be in store in that case to reduce warm-up time, and perhaps some lessons from Taildog could be implemented. The radar-slaving mode would also be an advantage over AIM-4, 7, 9 as well. Another advantage maybe the speed of the Lightning itself which could give the missile more range, but this very dependent on a number of factors.
 
Another thing to be aware of is that 2nd and 3rd gen fighters can't sustain turning, close-in dogfights for very long, they don't have the thrust so bleed off energy. I've read that a Mirage iii can do a very tight initial turn but at the end the induced drag means it's going very slow, so has to gain some speed and height before the next hard turn. Thus if the Red Top plane can't take a shot because the target is doing a 3g turn, just wait a few seconds until they have to fly straight with the afterburner.
 
More generally, AAMs before 1982, Falklands and Bekaa were hopeless. Put otherwise: nothing good before AIM-9L & AIM-7F, Magic 2 & Super 530F.
Before Magic 1 France used AIM-9B. None of the two was really efficient. Argentina had both on their Nesher and Mirage V.

The Falklands actually turned into a demonstration of the AIM-9 positive evolution, as Argentina had the -B but Great Britain had the -L, and the difference was night and day.
 
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As mentioned above, Red Top IR seeker could be slaved to the radar. The Lightning’s radar was manually scanned although primitive, kinda worked. So a ground controller would get Lightning on to the right course, after which the pilot would manually wrangle the radar beam around using a hand controller until it detected the target ahead. Hence the missiles seeker was pointing at the target long before it could detect the IR source. There was an ammonia bottle in the launch rail for seeker cooling, activated before launch, at a particular range to provide enhanced sensitivity. The enhanced cooling was alas a one shot, limited time thing. I understand also the tactical doctrine was to fire both missiles as a salvo. This functionality was the Red Top’s raison d'etre and I believe unique when introduced in 1964. Red Tops on the Sea Vixen worked in a similar way although from a proportional tracked radar.

Now there was a “close in” mode as well which would provide a non cooled, visually laid, solution but this was very different engagement ranges and I believe rear aspect only. I’ve never seen a mention of a slow warm up, a reference would be appreciated…. In fact when you see the seeker track pre flight test (the seeker real time tracking a hand held IR source) it’s difficult to believe,… what was warming up?.

The Sidewinder couldn’t do the radar laid seeker until the 9 Golf variant was introduce in the mid to late seventies.

Anyone know the details of the IR R530 engagement sequence?

There’s a YouTube video interview with a Swiss pilot who talks through the engagement sequence for the SARH R530 which I can’t find. From memory I’m not surprised it didn’t hit anything, as using it was quite complex, frought and unforgiving. He did say the kill probability improved with practice but in reality this could only be done with real missiles and targets, which was too expensive for most budgets.
 
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The Mirage F1 had both -530 : it started with the R-530 from its 1973 IOC; until the F1C-200 in the late 1970's got the Super-530F. French pilots made clear the R-530 was a turd. Had WWIII blew out, R-530 would have been mass fired in the hope of a few kills. That was the plan.
 
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were the only other Lightning users. They had some awkward neighbours but I dont think they used Red Top/Firestreak in anger.
The RAF has seen hardly any air to air combat since WW2. Apart from Korea and Suez I cant think of occasions when it happened. Lightning, Phantom, and Tornado ADV all left service without firing a missile in anger.
The confrontation with Indonesia might have been an occasion if it had gone on longer, and with Russian or Chinese support for Sukharno.
RAAF and RNZAF aircraft did not dogfight in Vietnam and I doubt even if a Conservative Government had sent a token force that RAF planes would have gone.
 
uk 75 said:
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were the only other Lightning users. They had some awkward neighbours but I dont think they used Red Top/Firestreak in anger.
The RAF has seen hardly any air to air combat since WW2. Apart from Korea and Suez I cant think of occasions when it happened. Lightning, Phantom, and Tornado ADV all left service without firing a missile in anger.
The confrontation with Indonesia might have been an occasion if it had gone on longer, and with Russian or Chinese support for Sukharno.
RAAF and RNZAF aircraft did not dogfight in Vietnam and I doubt even if a Conservative Government had sent a token force that RAF planes would have gone.
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The last official RAF pilot flying an RAF aircraft shooting down a manned opponent was in 1947 over Palestine. After that it’s all speculation and rumours.

The most relevant of those to this thread was the Javelin/Firestreak vs Indonesia C130. It certainly crashed, and at the time was too politically sensitive to be acknowledged as anything more than an accident…. Which is plausible to deny it was a shoot down.
 
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Buccaneer pilots when they finally got their mounts wired up for the AIM-9G certainly felt able to turn the tables on fighters down amongst the weeds.
 
uk 75 said:
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were the only other Lightning users. They had some awkward neighbours but I dont think they used Red Top/Firestreak in anger.
The RAF has seen hardly any air to air combat since WW2. Apart from Korea and Suez I cant think of occasions when it happened. Lightning, Phantom, and Tornado ADV all left service without firing a missile in anger.
The confrontation with Indonesia might have been an occasion if it had gone on longer, and with Russian or Chinese support for Sukharno.
RAAF and RNZAF aircraft did not dogfight in Vietnam and I doubt even if a Conservative Government had sent a token force that RAF planes would have gone.
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RAAF 77sqn fought in Korea, no RAF fighter sqn served there although some 32 RAF pilots flew with 77sqn. 77sqn was involved in a considerable amount of air to air combat, losing 4 Meteor F8s to mig 15s with no kills prior to Dec 1951 and shot down 5 mig 15s with no loss after Dec 1951.

As for the RAF, it conducted 3 strikes against Indonesian forces in the Confrontation in 1964-65 and did a lot of shadow boxing with Indonesian aircraft. It also conducted considerable ground attack combat in Yemen that also involved numerous interception sorties that didn't eventuate in air to air combat.

Of course Britain was a world power and could have been involved in any number of Cold War conflicts in different circumstances.
 
For any of the IR-guided missiles, one of the biggest advantages of the AIM9 over the AIM4 was the much longer cold time of the early AIM9s.

AIM4 was adequate for running an intercept on a non-maneuvering bomber, but any maneuvering to line up a shot would rapidly run the missile out of cooling.

Not sure what the cold time is for the other missiles, but aiming for ~30min cold would be one of the priority lessons coming out of Vietnam.
 

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