TY-90

Description

The TY-90 (天燕-90; Sky Swallow) is a Chinese infrared homing air-to-air missile. It was introduced in Update "Danger Zone".

Introduced in the 1990s as product of NORINCO for surface-to-air defense, TY-90 was also designated as the first "dedicated anti-rotorcraft missile" ever invented; thanks to its overall light weight yet UFO-like trajectory, this missile gives light helicopters a chance to fight back against aircrafts which fly upon players and the last thing they would see is the trail of TY-90.

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• Z-19E

General info

Missile characteristics
Mass	20 kg
Guidance	IR
Aspect	All-aspects
ECCM	Yes
Lock range (rear-aspect)	6 km
Lock range (all-aspect)	6 km
Launch range	6 km
Maximum speed	2 M
Maximum overload	20 G
Missile guidance time	16 secs
Explosive mass	1.5 kg TNTeq

Effective damage

TY-90 with its 1.5 kg TNT equivalent of explosive fillers can cause blast and shrapnel damages against both aircrafts and rotorcrafts.

Comparison with analogues

FIM-92 Stinger; 9M39 Igla; Mistral - The trio of MANPADS-based helicopter AAMs, due to their nature of MANPADS, the overall locking range and overload is nowhere close to the TY-90, making them falls in short in this sector.

Starstreak- Only found of British's AH Mk.1 Apache as its AAM option, the mach 3 speed amd 7 km range of Starstreak can certainly shoot down other rotorcrafts faster; while it suffers from the lack of proximity fuse and thus requires skill players to lead the missile onto the target.

Usage in battles

Currently available to Chinese helicopters from Z-9W to Z-10, TY-90 is their best friend: the overall overload and speed is sufficient enough to even shoot down jets at transonic speed, which is especially deadly at low-tired battles. Depending on the heat signature and the range of target, the best acquisition range for TY-90 would be within 4 km where most aerial targets would be locked by the heat seeker; in case players didn't find the target, use the gunner sights to help searching for targets, then unleash hell upon them; players who didn't do enough maneuvers will certainly meets their miserable end of being blasted by TY-90. Making helicopters with TY-90 dubbed "a flying SPAAG".

Pros and cons

Pros:

• 20G tracking overload
• All-aspect tracking
• Electric Counter Counter Measures

Cons:

• Slow speed, can be outrun by some aircraft
• Relatively low explosive mass

History

At early 1990s, PLAGF deemed that conversion of MANPADS onto helicopters would not be sufficient for future battlefields where heat-suppression system will be commonplace, after the unknown development process, the earliest variant DY-90 appeared in the 5th Zhuhai Airshow as a ground-based SAM system; where later TY-90 was incorporated onto wheeled chassis such as WZ551 (known as Yitian 倚天) or various PLAGF HUMMEV-like vehicles. The navalized version HQ-10/FN-3000 was upgraded with the seeker from QW series MANPADS and served as the CIWS missiles for PLAN and their export vessels.

But up to present time, no records of TY-90 or DY-90 have any recorded sales.

Media

Excellent additions to the article would be video guides, screenshots from the game, and photos.

See also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:

• reference to the article about the variant of the weapon;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

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• topic on the official game forum;
• other literature.