AIM-120 AMRAAM

[serverandenforcer]

Some of you here may have already heard from me that my dad, back in the 1980's did work on the AIM-120 AMRAAM. What I didn't know until tonight is how influential he was with the project. Apparently, during development, Hughes Aircraft and Missiles (HAM) contracted a company down in San Diego to design and produce the AGC Amp for the missile. They were going to build it out of gallium-arcinide, which would have cost the part $330,000, and the part was going to be used 3 times in the missile. My dad saw this and told his bosses that he thinks he can design a part to do the same job, but made out of silicon, in which the part would only cost $50! HAM did a design concession and approved for my dad to design and build the part. The design ended up being a big success. It was more efficient and reliable than the part from the other company and just about took $1,000,000 off the price tag of a missile! He received a peformance achievement award and several other commendatoions for the job. I just thought that was kind of cool and wanted to share it with you folks.

[Derk]

 

Hou doe,

 

Derk

[SFP1Ace]

Cool! I don't think that an a-a missile with a price tag of well over 1000000$ would be very cost effective

[+MigBuster]

Crikey - thats the kind of bloke you want in any company - what a guy!

[Ghost029]

This is the kind of man that everyone always wants and there are never enough of. Congraduations

[serverandenforcer]

All right, so I did a quick study up on how much the AIM-120A cost when first distributed, and it came up to $300,000. So I told my dad this and he was kind of surprised. Then he told that he might have gotten the figures wrong and instead of almost 1 million bucks, it might have been in the 1 thousand dollar range lol! Anyways, wanted to make sure I gave you guys an accurate story.

[+JediMaster]

AFAIK the AIM-54 was the only AAM that cost over $1m, which is one reason why it was so good and also why it was not made in massive numbers.

[Abhi]