The limitations of the modern sidewinder missle.

[bob q]

Sucking it up in the air intake would be a real good idea .

[CINDERS]

Maybe it was close to its stores use by date and they experimented with programing the missiles ability to track and lock onto the balloon.
Not that the balloon was going to fast but in the realms of target acquisition and recognition, they could have used an SR-71's pointy nose to pop it if they had them flying again......
Be a bit of a train wreck but hitting the balloon at Mach 2.5+.

[mrclark303]

Sucking it up in the air intake would be a real good idea .

You certainly wouldn't want to end up with a Chinese 'sticky beak' balloon with an F22 kill symbol on it as the flamed out F22 becomes reacquainted with gravity!

The difficulty in getting a guns firing solution on a slow moving object at high altitude is not without its dangers, they probably thought an Aim9X would be a suitable pin for the job!

[GeeRam]

Did some checking: An internally mounted M61A2 Vulcan 20 mm rotary cannon is embedded in the airplane's right wing root with the muzzle covered by a retractable door. The radar projection of the cannon fire's path is displayed on the pilot's head-up display.

Why are they firing missiles at balloons?

Because at the height it was at, it was too far away to use the cannon.
The cannon can't be used above 50,000ft from what I understand, hence the the use of the prox fused AIM-9X being used.

They had to fly a U-2 to recce it as it was the only thing that could get up that high and see from close in.

[CINDERS]

GeeRAM do you know why the cannon cannot be used @50,000', seems odd as if you've run out of missiles you cannot hit back, though in todays world it seems its an out of sight engagement or who has the best missiles.

---------- Post added at 10:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:17 PM ----------

Seems friendship only goes so far bit like the C130 gunships the USA did not sell any of those to any one either.
Why America never sold the F-22 Raptor to foreign countries - Sandboxx

[jond41403]

I was wondering the same thing cinders. I wonder if it has something to do with drag on the projectiles? I do know from watching U2 plane videos, that the higher the U2 flies, the faster it has to go because of its wing design to stay controllable. I wonder if the same thing happens to projectiles? I just wonder what the performance differences would be at extreme high altitude between projectiles fired from a 20 mm cannon

[GeeRam]

GeeRAM do you know why the cannon cannot be used @50,000', seems odd as if you've run out of missiles you cannot hit back, though in todays world it seems its an out of sight engagement or who has the best missiles.[COLOR="black"]

The cannon is behind a door in the fuselage likely to do with the stealth design, and the door can only be opened to operate the cannon below 50k feet.

With the air density up at those heights, you'd not want to be trying to engage in a guns fight anyway, if you've run out of missiles, you'd be bugging out pdq.

I have a vague recollection that there was an altitude limitation on using the cannon on some older RAF stuff as well?