AIM-9 Sidewinder
1952 air-to-air missile family by Raytheon
The AIM-9 Sidewinder is a short-range air-to-air missile. It entered service with the United States Navy in 1956 and the Air Force in 1964, and is one of the oldest, cheapest, and most successful air-to-air missiles. Its latest variants (AIM-9X) remain standard equipment in most Western-aligned air forces. The Soviet K-13 (AA-2 "Atoll"), a reverse-engineered copy of the AIM-9B, was also widely adopted.
Low-level development started in the late 1940s, emerging in the early 1950s as a guidance system for the modular Zuni rocket. This modularity allowed for the introduction of newer seekers and rocket motors, including the AIM-9C variant, which used semi-active radar homing and served as the basis of the AGM-122 Sidearm anti-radar missile. Due to the Sidewinder's infrared guidance system, the brevity code "Fox two" is used when firing the AIM-9. Originally a tail-chasing system, early models saw extensive use during the Vietnam War, but had a low success rate (8% hit rate with the AIM-9E variant). This led to all-aspect capability in the L (Lima) version, which proved an effective weapon during the 1982 Falklands War and Operation Mole Cricket 19 in Lebanon. Its adaptability has kept it in service over newer designs like the AIM-95 Agile and SRAAM that were intended to replace it.
The public source identifies “AIM-9 Sidewinder” as 1952 air-to-air missile family by Raytheon. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around AIM-9, Sidewinder and air-to-air.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q235396. The Library of Congress control number is sh85122321. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1964 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “AIM-9 Sidewinder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.