page_title: AIM-9 Sidewinder
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: AIM-9 Sidewinder / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: The Sidewinder has been one of the most successful short-range air-to-air missiles for the United States, and its first heat-seeking guided missile to become operational. Many models have been produced since the mid-19505, including the standard version displayed here. A variety of aircraft have carried sidewinders, and variants have been adopted by about 40 countries. They have been used extensively in combat, including the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. Picture taken at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, USA. Length: 3 m (9 ft 11 in) Weight, loaded: 70 kg (155 lb) Range: 4.8 km (3 mi) Propellant: solid fuel Manufacturer: Philco Ford Aerospace-- Transferred from the U.S. Air Force Museum
context_page_description: The AIM-9 Sidewinder is a short-range air-to-air missile which entered service with the US Navy in 1956 and subsequently was adopted by the US Air Force in 1964. Since then the Sidewinder has proved to be an enduring international success, and its latest variants are still standard equipment in most western-aligned air forces. The Soviet K-13, a reverse-engineered copy of the AIM-9, was also widely adopted by a number of nations.
  Low-level development started in the late 1940s, emerging in the early 1950s as a guidance system for the modular Zuni rocket. This modularity allowed for the introduction of newer seekers and rocket motors, including the AIM-9C variant, which used semi-active radar homing and served as the basis of the AGM-122 Sidearm anti-radar missile. Originally a tail-chasing system, early models saw extensive use during the Vietnam War but had a low success rate. This led to all-aspect capabilities in the L version which proved to be an extremely effective weapon during combat in the Falklands War and the Operation Mole Cricket 19 in Lebanon. Its adaptability has kept it in service over newer designs like the AIM-95 Agile and SRAAM that were intended to replace it.
context_section_description: During World War II, various researchers in Germany designed infrared guidance systems of various complexity. The most mature development of these, codenamed Hamburg, was intended for use by the Blohm & Voss BV 143 glide bomb in the anti-shipping role. Hamburg used a single IR photocell as its detector along with a spinning disk with lines painted on it, alternately known as a "reticle" or "chopper". The reticle spun at a fixed speed, causing the output of the photocell to be interrupted in a pattern, and the details of this pattern indicated the bearing of the target. Although Hamburg and similar devices like Madrid were essentially complete, the work of mating them to a missile had not been carried out by the time the war ended.
  In the immediate post-war era, Allied military intelligence teams collected this information, along with many of the engineers working on these projects. Several lengthy reports on the various systems were produced and disseminated among the western aircraft firms, while a number of the engineers joined these companies to work on various missile projects. By the late 1940s a wide variety of missile projects were underway, from huge systems like the Bell Bomi to small systems like air-to-air missiles. By the early 1950s, both the US Air Force and Royal Air Force had started major IR seeker missile projects.
  The development of the Sidewinder missile began in 1946 at the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS), Inyokern, California, now the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California as an in-house research project conceived by William B. McLean. McLean initially called his effort "Local Fuze Project 602" using laboratory funding, volunteer help and fuze funding to develop what it called a heat-homing rocket. It did not receive official funding until 1951 when the effort was mature enough to show to Admiral William "Deak" Parsons, the Deputy Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd). It subsequently received designation as a program in 1952. The Sidewinder introduced several new technologies that made it simpler and much more reliable than its United States Air Force (USAF) counterpart, the AIM-4 Falcon, under development during the same period. After disappointing experiences with the Falcon in the Vietnam War, the Air Force replaced its Falcons with Sidewinders.
  Nearly 100,000 of the first generation (AIM-9B/C/D/E) of the Sidewinder were produced with Raytheon and General Electric as major sub-contractors. Philco-Ford produced the guidance and control sections of the early missiles. The NATO version of the first generation missile was built under licence in Germany by Bodenseewerk Gerätetechnik; 9,200 examples were built. A second generation of the missile (AIM-9G/H/J) was introduced during 1970. These were followed from the mid-seventies by the AIM-9L/P which was a substantial improvement on the early versions, particularly with an improved SR-116 reduced-smoke rocket motor. The third generation of the missile (AIM-9L/M) are all-aspect missile which share little in common with the earlier missiles.
  The name Sidewinder was selected in 1950 and is the common name of Crotalus cerastes, a venomous rattlesnake, which uses infrared sensory organs to hunt warm-blooded prey.
  Originally called the Sidewinder 1, the first live firing was on 3 September 1952. The missile intercepted a drone for the first time on the 11 September 1953. The missile carried out 51 guided flights in 1954, and in 1955 production was authorised.
  In 1954, the US Air Force carried out trials with the original AIM-9A and the improved AIM-9B at the Holloman Air Development Center. The first operational use of the missile was by Grumman F9F-8 Cougars and FJ-3 Furies of the United States Navy in the middle of 1956.  The Maximal effective range for AIM-9B is 2.6 NM or 4.8 Kilometers, maximal in flight speed is 1.7 Mach.
caption: Sidewinder Missile at Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, USA.
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