[DesertFox]

Curious, what is the longest range air to air kill using missiles.....
Not against a Drone or a target but in a real combat situation?

Secondarily, what is the longest range surface to air kill using a missile....
Again, not against a drone or target but against an enemy aircraft?

Did a quick Google but did not see anything.

[Mote]

If Tom Cooper is to be believed, there were a couple AIM-54 kills by Iran around 30 miles during the Iran-Iraq War.

[Luke Y]

If you discount the AIM-54 engagements (Controversial outside of the Iran-Cheering section) you're left with a whole stack of AIM-7 kills, possibly some by an R27 somewhere.

[Justin]

There have been some AIM-120 kills in Yugoslavia and Iraq I believe not sure what the ranges were on those.

As far as a SAM kill maybe one of the Missiles fired at the U-2?

[DesertFox]

USS Long Beach is suppose to have killed a MiG at 65 nm

[shep854]

DesertFox, on Sun 19 Apr 2009 2212, said:

USS Long Beach is suppose to have killed a MiG at 65 nm

USS Chicago also scored some rather long-range kills, I believe. Isn't there a Petty Officer who scored several kills with SAMs?

Terrible surprise for those NVN pilots with no Yankee fighters around, no? :P

EDIT: I just checked Wiki under "Talos Missile", and it said that Talos made three kills over NVN with launches from Long Beach and Chicago. Ranges weren't given, though

This post has been edited by shep854: 20 April 2009 - 0728 AM

[Josh]

I would guess there were perhaps AIM-54 kills by the Iranians that exceeded sparrow kills in range, but there's probably no hard documentation. My guess would be that AM-7 had its longest ranged kills is '91, since ROE didn't allow it to be used at its full range in Vietnam. AIM-120 has been used several times and might be a candidate; not aware of any of the ranges however. I'm assuming you mean combat kill and kills against drones; AIM-54 certainly has been tested at ranges exceeding 30 miles against drones. Six were ripple fired at six drones for three hits and one lethal pass; one 'no test' when a drone's blip enhancer failed. I think there were a number of single fired tests against drones at 50+ nm.

Talos is definately a candidate for SAM kills. S-200 as used by the Ukraine probably has it beat, if you count accidently shooting down a civilian airliner as a 'kill'.

[Lieste]

jua, on Wed 22 Apr 2009 1639, said:

I would guess there were perhaps AIM-54 kills by the Iranians that exceeded sparrow kills in range, but there's probably no hard documentation. My guess would be that AM-7 had its longest ranged kills is '91, since ROE didn't allow it to be used at its full range in Vietnam. AIM-120 has been used several times and might be a candidate; not aware of any of the ranges however. I'm assuming you mean combat kill and kills against drones; AIM-54 certainly has been tested at ranges exceeding 30 miles against drones. Six were ripple fired at six drones for three hits and one lethal pass; one 'no test' when a drone's blip enhancer failed. I think there were a number of single fired tests against drones at 50+ nm.

Talos is definately a candidate for SAM kills. S-200 as used by the Ukraine probably has it beat, if you count accidently shooting down a civilian airliner as a 'kill'.

How about the shoot down of the USA-193 satellite recently? 'Space' is pretty far off... But the Chinese ASAT shot from 2007 may have intercepted at a higher altitude.

This post has been edited by Lieste: 22 April 2009 - 1152 AM

[ShotMagnet]

I think the thread is talking about air-air kills. As in, one aircraft shooting down another.


Shot

[aevans]

ShotMagnet, on Thu 23 Apr 2009 1434, said:

I think the thread is talking about air-air kills. As in, one aircraft shooting down another.
Shot

DF did ask about surface-to-air as well.

As I recall, the legend among the Long Beach's missile fire control types was that the two Talos kills were at 70 NM.

[JOE BRENNAN]

From my post a couple of years ago re Talos combat use: The book, semi official history, doesn't specify whether 65 is nautical or statute miles, I haven't read the Monthly Historical Reports of the ship, which it references. The VPAF statements potentially verify those kills.

"There was an ROE controversy about firing Talos overland, it took time for permission to be obtained for those first Long Beach shots in May 1968, and later the JCS once again banned overland shots. The May shots were, per first hand accounts on the web, conducted as ambushes where Terrier DLG's (Biddle and Jouett) radiated and transmitted data via Link 11 to Long Beach, which then went active and fired when enemy a/c were outside Terrier but within Talos range. The first shot May 11 missed, another May 23 claimed a kill at 65 miles. Long Beach made another claim in September at 61 miles, exact date unkown, but missed on 5 other occasions. Jouett missed once with Terriers in the same period. Source for dates and ranges is "Black Shoes and Blue Water", semi-official history by Muir, which footnotes action reports.

The VPAF official history (aka "Air War over North Vietnam" by Toperczer, apparently just a digest/translation of the official history) says "US a/c often attempted to lure MiG's toward the carrier groups where they were met with long range missile and AAA fire. Also starting in May [1968] were attempts to attack US ships...5 air attacks were launched without success and two a/c were lost...[b]oth pilots ejected successfully". The air attacks on PCF's and HMAS Hobart occurred in the summer of 1968, officially judged friendly fire by USAF fighters' AIM-7's; Hobart did report swept wing fighters but some first hand accounts from the Swifts still insist helicopters attacked them."

Joe

[Scott Cunningham]

how far off was that SA=300 shot the russians did on that civilian jet? I think it was WAY past what we thought it would do.

[Mote]

Scott Cunningham, on Fri 24 Apr 2009 2224, said:

how far off was that SA=300 shot the russians did on that civilian jet? I think it was WAY past what we thought it would do.

Ukranian S-200.

Quote

In this particular case, it is most likely that the long-range illuminator designated two targets on the same line-of-sight bearing - the La-17 and the unfortunate Tu-154. The 5N62 radar's illumination beam is narrow, but since the distance to the La-17 was 90 miles, it was still wide enough to cover the Tu-154 about 170 miles away as well. The missile received two radar returns and headed towards the stronger one: the Tu-l54, which has a much larger radar cross-section than the tiny La-17. The missile missed its "intended" target, but was still locked on the second one. In such a situation, the only reasonable solution is to send a self-destruct command. Either this was not done, or the missile simply failed to self-destruct on command, although the former appears most likely. Due to what can only be called amazing negligence, the SAM crew did not notice that the missile had locked onto the wrong target. The airliner was actually beyond the range of the S-200 system but was hit anyway by fragments of the ens uing nearby explosion of the 5V28 missile. The missile's officially stated range is 145 miles, but that figure relates to 0.8 kill probability. The 170-mile distance could, however, be covered with the kill probability reduced by a certain degree (about 0.2-0.3). In fact, according to sources, firing at these longer ranges was "successfully explored." The hit was probably taken for automatic self-destruction, which is set to occur at a certain time after launch, the equivalent of flight time for the maximum range plus several seconds.

Source

[tankerwanabe]

Mote, on Sun 19 Apr 2009 1115, said:

If Tom Cooper is to be believed, there were a couple AIM-54 kills by Iran around 30 miles during the Iran-Iraq War.

As I recalled, the Iranians documented its pilots using the AIM-54 on a particular date. And on that date at about the same hour, the Iraqis recorded an Mirage 1 blew up in mid-air. It was left unexplained as there was no air collision. And because the stockpile on the AIM-54 were so limited, the Iranians were pretty diligent in recording their use. So what we're left with is circumstantial evidence.

On the other hand, most BVR are circumstantial evidence.

I think that's how the story went.

[Scott Cunningham]

Lockheed was pitching the SR-71 as an interceptor and managed to get 12 hits from 13 shots with a missile/radar combo they installed. Some of the kills were well past 40 miles, but I think they were just on target drones.

[Dan Robertson]

Some possible candidates for longest range kill may actually be Iraqi Mirage F1's firing Super 530 missiles. Likewise the Iraqi Mig-25 that shot down an F18 on the first night of the 1991 war is also likely to be a candidate. In both cases I doubt friendly fire was a concern.

As far as the longest range SAM shot HMS Exeter shot down a Learjet that thought it was significantly outside the missiles engagement envelope, ie further than 40 miles.

[Mote]

<Mods delete this post if you see it, I need to read better>

This post has been edited by Mote: 27 May 2009 - 0449 AM