Firestreak

Firestreak fired from a Javelin F.(A.W.) Mk.9.

Description

The Firestreak is a British Infrared homing air-to-air missile, it was introduced in Update 1.85 "Supersonic", along with the Javelin F.(A.W.) Mk.9 (the only aircraft currently equipped with it).

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• Javelin F.(A.W.) Mk.9

General info

The Firestreak is a large missile, with a massive 22.7 kg warhead. The Firestreak is a very early air-to-air missile design; indeed it was Britain's first operation heat seeking missile. It has slightly worse manoeuvrability than other early heat seeking missiles, but a much larger warhead, and is otherwise comparable in terms of speed and range.

Effective damage

The Firestreak has a massive 22.7 kg warhead, the highest of any air-to-air missile in the game, making it capable of outright destroying any target it gets a direct hit on. The warhead has a larger proximity fuse setting than other heat seeking missiles (10 m as opposed to the more standard 5 m), this helps slightly offset the missiles poor manoeuvrability as any aircraft caught in the proximity fuse range is likey to suffer critical damage due to the large explosive mass.

Comparison with analogues

Firestreaks have a warhead of 22.7 kilograms, being more than four times as explosive than the AIM-9B, which only contains 4.5 kilograms of explosives. However it is slightly less manoeuvrable than the AIM-9B with a 5 G max overload compared to the AIM-9B's 6 G.

Usage in battles

This missile is not agile. Do not use them on targets that are manoeuvrable as they will easily evade it. Instead, use them on bombers or aircraft which have no energy left to manoeuvre as it will be more difficult for them to evade the missile.

As this missile seeks infrared radiation (IR), be aware of locking onto other sources of heat which can throw the missile off course such as other teammates, flares and of course, the sun.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Largest warhead of any air to air missile
• The IR seeker has a fairly wide field of view when slaved to the Javelin's radar

Cons:

• At 5G it has the lowest overload of any missile in the game and is easily avoidable

History

Examine the history of the creation and combat usage of this weapon. If the historical reference turns out to be too big, take it to a separate article, taking a link to an article about the vehicle and adding a block "/ History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(weapon-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article.

Media

An excellent addition to the article would be a video guide, as well as 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 cannon/machine gun;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

• [Wikipedia] de Havilland Firestreak