![]() The proposed Douglas F6D Missileer was intended to fulfill this mission and oppose the attack as far as possible from the fleet it was defending. The Navy would require a long-range, long-endurance interceptor aircraft to defend carrier battle groups against this threat. This combination was considered capable of saturating fleet defenses and threatening carrier groups. Since 1951, the Navy faced the initial threat from the Tupolev Tu-4K 'Bull' carrying anti-ship missiles or nuclear bombs.Įventually, during the height of the Cold War, the threat would have expanded into regimental-size raids of Tu-16 Badger and Tu-22M Backfire bombers equipped with low-flying, long-range, high-speed, nuclear-armed cruise missiles and considerable electronic countermeasures (ECM) of various types. ![]() ![]() Navy, the weapon's only current operator is the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. Following the retirement of the F-14 by the U.S. The AIM-54 has been used in 62 air-to-air strikes, all by Iran during the eight-year Iran–Iraq War. They were replaced by the shorter-range AIM-120 AMRAAM, employed on the F/A-18 Hornet and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet-in its AIM-120D version, the latest version of the AMRAAM just matches the Phoenix's maximum range. In US service both are now retired, the AIM-54 Phoenix in 2004 and the F-14 in 2006. Due to its active radar tracking, the brevity code " Fox Three" was used when firing the AIM-54.īoth the missile and the aircraft were used by Iran and the United States Navy. The combination of Phoenix missile and the Tomcat's AN/AWG-9 guidance radar meant that it was the first aerial weapons system that could simultaneously engage multiple targets. The Phoenix was the United States' only long-range air-to-air missile. The AIM-54 Phoenix is an American radar-guided, long-range air-to-air missile (AAM), carried in clusters of up to six missiles on the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, its only operational launch platform.
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