Israel has modified the seeker head of the AIM-9M Sidewinder air-to-air missile, thanks to which this weapon can now fight long-range strike drones like the Shahed-family with better effectiveness the decision to upgrade this missile was made based on the results of iran’s attack on Israel in April 2024.
This is stated in a report by the U.S. Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), whose recent report was analyzed by TWZ. It states that the modified AIM-9M did not cope very well with the task of intercepting drones, unlike the AIM-9X version.
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AIM-9M / Open-source photo
Therefore, the Israeli Air Force decided to make some changes to the AIM-9M missile’s seeker head, and this positively affected its effectiveness, the FPRI report states.
Israel keeps all details of this modification secret even the fact of whether it was hardware or software, or both at once, remains secret: no details about the AIM-9M upgrade project are disclosed.
Here one could say that such an improvement should be relevant for those AIM-9Ms in service with Ukraine’s Defense Forces considering that these missiles are used primarily against long-range strike drones.
However, given that we’re talking about Israel, such an option looks very, very unlikely.
Especially considering the fact that Israel has not yet shared its developments with any of their allies and this includes even the United States.
Defense Express previously reported that Ukraine may have secretly received a BRAWLR air defense truck for R-27, APKWS, AIM-9M missiles and more.
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