Comment by yborg
4 years ago
> Russia over-estimated the capabilities of a generation of the Sidewinder missile and built their equivalent to match what they thought it must contain
No. The K-13/AA-2 Atoll is a literal copy of an AIM-9 reverse-engineered from an example captured by the Chinese.
He is talking about the Vymple R-73 which was meant to counter the capabilities of a project that got cancelled, but they thought has become classified.
Yep. I can neither remember nor find my copy of Ron Westrum's China Lake book to check which feature it was, but it was one of helmet-mounted targeting or thrust vectoring. I think it was the latter but wouldn't put money on it.