Inside the AIM-9 Sidewinder Missile

This is a video about an infrared heat-seeking missile.
The AIM-9 Sidewinder was first developed by the US Navy and later adopted by the US Airforce.
We get to look at the components that give the sidewinder its effective functionalities and what makes it superior to its counterparts.
#aim9 , #missile, #military

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:42 - History
1:47 - Missile Overview
3:13 - GCS ( Guidance and Control Section)
6:33 - Proportional Navigation
7:40 - AIM-9B Taiwan Incident
8:02 - Target Detection Device ( TDD )
8:44 - Warhead
9:46 - Rocket Motor
10:17 - Wing Assembly & Rollerons
11:25 - Outro

The Sidewinder has four basic components;
The GCG ( Guidance and Control Group ): is the brain of the missile where the electronics, optical assembly, cooler, thermal battery, and fins are housed. The GCG has seen countless upgrades and changes, and this video discusses parts of the GCG with interesting concepts.

The TDD and Safe-Arming: The TDD or Target Detection Device is a proximity fuse that is used to detect when the missile is in the immediate environment of the target aircraft. It uses laser, infrared or radio waves and I have explained the inner workings in-depth. Between the TDD and the GCG is a Safe-Arming device that provides most of the safety for the missile before and after launch, the warhead will not detonate if the missile isn't 1000ft away from the launch aircraft and if there isn't any signal coming from the contact fuse or the proximity fuse.
Apart from the TDD, a contact fuse is located inside the pistons of the GCG that provides an additional detonation signal in case the missile slams into the target aircraft.

The Warhead: The warhead was the most fascinating part of the missile that got me interested, it uses a high-explosive HMX-Nylon that upon detonation unleashes an annular continuous-rod warhead; basically it is a bunch of chained-up up titanium-rods that will expand to 10m.

The Rocket Motor: The Rocket Motor is the main propellant of the sidewinder and has also seen significant upgrades to it. At first, it was incredibly easy to detect that an AIM-9 had been launched since the rocket motor had a thick black smoke, coupled with the iconic sidewinding pattern. It was also underpowered and only lasted for 2 seconds. Further upgrades will make it nearly smokeless and boost it to 5 seconds of burn time with improved performance.

The Wings and rollers: On older missiles, the rollers were the crowd favorite as they were gyroscopically stabilized blades that were powered by the aero-dynamic force applied to them.

The AIM-9 is currently on AIM-9X Block II as per Raytheon and uses a Focal Array Tracker along with several Counter-Counter Measures updates.

The heat seeker family has dramatically changed dogfighting and I hope you enjoy what I have made about the interesting parts.