Dear fatman,
It seems that you have searched wikipedia for your missile technology moment, MAYBE.
re: “In the Vietnam Era a pilot would have to fire the missile then keep the nose of his aircraft pointed at the target so the missile could home in on the reflected radar returns.”
As a Viet vet, and a Phantom Fixer, you are misled. The ‘radar dish’ was NOT transfixed to a ‘zero/zero’ permanency.
I suggest you do research on the Janes’ site, typing:
APQ-109; APQ-120, in the search bar.
He’s thinking of the Wild Weasels aircraft in Vietnam.
In brief, the task of a Wild Weasel aircraft is to bait enemy anti-aircraft defenses into targeting it with their radars, whereupon the radar waves are traced back to their source allowing the Weasel or its teammates to precisely target it for destruction.
It was an insane mission for a pilot to grab the attention and attack Surface to Air Missile Sites (aka SAMS). NUTS!
My point still stands, the Sparrow missile and other radar guided missiles had to be guided to the target by the radar reflection from its aircrafts radar reflecting off the target aircraft thus during Vietnam pilots were barely able to maneuver while the missile was in flight because they had to keep the target on their nose within a small envelope to keeps it radar bouncing off the target so the missile could home in on it and not lose lock. Just as an FYI I have spent many years working on combat systems for the Navy for 30 years, and part of my job has been learning about and troubleshooting missile systems so before you try such arrogance in dismissing what I say you should think about that. The fact is with early A2A radar missile technology the pilot of the firing aircraft had to keep the target on his nose or very close, the envelope was very small. Todays missiles by contrast are fire and forget, much better tech.