The United States military in the near future shot down spy balloons from China and most recently, mysterious objects in space or UFOs. The weapon used is an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile fired by an F-22 stealth fighter jet. This missile is not arbitrary.
As quoted by us from Fortune, Tuesday (14/2/2023) the Sidewinder missile is produced by Raytheon Technologies and has long been a mainstay of the US military. This missile is also sold to 31 other countries, and it turns out that this also includes Indonesia.
"Raytheon said it has 31 foreign military sales partners, with countries including South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia all having purchased the missile," Fortune wrote.
The Sidewinder is primarily an air-to-air missile, but the latest version of the AIM-9X is a weapon that can also be used from the ground and against ground-based targets. This missile can be widely used in various modern jets including the F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-22 Raptor.
The US Department of Defense will increase the stock of the 255 missiles for USD 111.9 million in the 2023 budget year. That means that each missile costs around USD 439,000 or around IDR 6.6 billion.
But the price is not binding, sometimes there are significant discounts. Other countries usually need to pay for other things such as equipment, spare parts and related training costs.
The AIM-9X Sidewinder is a heat-seeking missile, with supersonic speed and a short range. The presence of infrared allows the missile to engage targets in various settings at any time of the day.
The 84 kg Sidewinder is powered by solid fuel, and is 3 meters long. There are advanced variants such as the Block II with improved features, including a lock-on-after-launch capability so the pilot firing it doesn't have to rely on visual aiming.