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.
Dear fatman,
You say, you have 30 years naval avionics experience.
From the choice of language, you define yourself as an “engineer”.
I *could* be flippant, and expound on such, but that old quote about ‘pearls’ comes to mind.
Good night.