The Sidewinder Tail Is a Special Relic

Since their arrival on March 13, the airmen of the HDF 59th “Dezső Szentgyörgyi" Air Base have attended a whole series of briefings and several planning sessions in the interest of the successful execution of a live missile firing campaign, the first mission during a nearly weeklong live fire exercise in Sweden.

The Swedish ground crew of the air base handed over the AIM–9 Sidewinder missiles to their Hungarian colleagues in the early morning hours of Monday, March 16, and the Hungarians immediately started to mount them on the Gripen wingtips. This process requires very thorough and careful work, as they need to take care of each pylon and adapter to make sure that the missile launch does not have some surprises in store for the pilots… But – as proven by the exercise – thanks to the careful job done by the Kecskemét ground crew, every missile was launched and hit the target…

For most pilots flying the Gripens that took off at Vidsel Air Base, this has been the first opportunity to fire live missiles. They told us that when they fired the missile at an acquired target, it left the aircraft surprisingly loudly and very fast.

The size of the target itself was not bigger than a pilot’s helmet. The drone of the Swedish Air Force carried four targets under their wings, and released them on a cable to tow them behind. At that point, an infrared flare lit up in the targets. The heat-seeking warheads of the Gripen-mounted missiles homed in on this hot area of the targets.

Following a successful lock-on, the pilots had to launch the Sidewinders at the right moment. Although many of them fired this kind of weapon for the first time, all Hungarian fighter pilots successfully acquired and hit the target.

After the landing, there was a ceremony that is well-known among fighter pilots. The ground crew detached the cable stub – the Sidewinder tail – from the launch rail and handed them to the proud pilots as a special relic.

Exercise Air Superiority continues with an air-to-air gunnery in Sweden.

Photos by the author