Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "How the Warhead on the AIM-9 Sidewinder Works - Smarter Every Day 282" video.

  1. Reflection from the sun, being hotter than the background air. The 9X has a true "computer vision" rather than relying on 1, 2 or 4 sensors. It's like a digital camera but for the thermal spectrum. It sees the balloon just like a thermal camera can see you at 37ºC when the wall behind you is at 22ºC.
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  2. The warheads on the Buk missile are blast fragmentation, with "square" and "bowtie" fragments. The wreckage of the MH17 even shows that pattern on the skin. Those work more like a shotgun blast.
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  3. Not necessarily, because the motor stopped burning at 3/4ths of the way there. After the motor burns out, the fins have to steer.
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  4. No. It has to do with the fact the barrel roll causes the aircraft in question to point its velocity vector in a very wide arc within the span of a few seconds. Missiles in a lead pursuit are not trying to get to where the aircraft is, they're trying to get to where the aircraft will be. So the barrel roll creates a situation where the aircraft will create several fictional "future positions" and the missile has to re-calculate new control inputs to resume the collision course. Combine this with older seekers, less efficient control guidance laws, and the target aircraft dumping flares, and it's possible that the missile either starts to run out of kinetic energy to maneuver or picks up the track of a flare where it predicted the aircraft would be. Modern guidance laws are more efficient as an aircraft doing a barrel roll will be "seen" by the missile as actually not moving too much so the missile "thinks" it's not worth wasting energy trying to compensate for the roll.
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  5. How so? The F-22 has Sidewinder specific cheek bays.
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  6. The imperfection would cause the push to actually knock the hinged part out of alignment and cause unwanted rotation.
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  7. It has to do with the flight profile (bang bang controls in the first variants) and the fact that sidewinders are pit vipers (they have an organ that senses the heat of the prey through IR, like the seeker).
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