The missiles caused many casualties among Iraq s Air Force.
Here s What You Need to Know: The only country successfully to wield the AIM-54 in combat has been Iran.
The U.S. Navy’s AIM-54 Phoenix, the exclusive long-range weapon of the F-14 Tomcat fighter, is one of the most powerful air-to-air missiles every to exist.
Thirteen feet long and weighing 1,000 pounds, the rocket-propelled, radar-guided AIM-54 flew at Mach five as high as 80,000 feet while carrying a devastating, 135-pound warhead over a range of more than 100 miles.
Former Navy F-14 pilot Francesco Chierici called the Phoenix “a lethal sledgehammer of a missile.”
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