PL-2
Contents
Description
The PL-2 (霹雳-2)is a Chinese infrared homing air-to-air missile, it was introduced in Update 1.91 "Night Vision".
Vehicles equipped with this weapon
General info
Length: 2.83m
Mass: 75.3kg
Diameter: 127mm
Maximum speed: M 1.7
Maximum range: 11 km
Effective damage
With 8.8kg of TNT equivalent explosives which does shrapnel and explosive damages to aircrafts
Comparison with analogues
Since PL-2 is the direct licensed copy of Soviet R-3S (AA-2 Atoll) missile, which was reversed engineered from USAF's AIM-9B, these 3 missiles performs very similarly with PL-2 and R-3S being identical in all statistics and both lag behind AIM-9B a bit in terms of maximum firing range.
Usage in battles
Just like any early IR AAMs, PL-2 suffers from a low tracking rate and overload, and this problem is worsening due to the overall higher mass over its American counterpart; so the best way to utilize PL-2 is picking off targets which has just exited from their maneuvers, PL-2 works well on finishing off careless targets or those which has depleted all their energy and waiting to sign his own death warrant. It might sometimes have surprise kills over 2 km but this is rare so in most cases targets within 700m to 1.8 km is the way to go.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- High explosive mass
- Hard to dodge at close range
Cons:
- Easy to dodge at range
- Can't keep up with supersonic jets that are above Mach 1
History
PL-2, a licensed copy of a reversed-engineered missile- R-3S (or K-13/AA-2 Atoll) which was based from USAF's AIM-9B and the story of these missiles goes back to September, 1958; the month when the very first man-to-man aerial missile kill happened.
One day, after dogfighting with ROCAF F-86F-40, a pilot of PLAAF found a surprising "gift"- an UXO of AIM-9B struck in his MiG-17's(or J-5) wing, after bringing his fighter back to base, PLAAF technicians removed this missile and reported back to the Central Military Commission, this missile was then handed to the Soviet Union for further study, along with the data provided by a spy in Sweden, Soviets have successfully reversed-engineered AIM-9B and thus, R-3S was made.
Later in 30 March, 1961, the Soviet Union has signed technology transfer memorandum and licensing MiG-21F-13, its engine and R-3S to Mainland China and a year later, with a sample was handed to the Chinese, they started pre-production run of the missile and eventually, this missile came into PLAAF's service and served them for more than 3 decades, as well as different foreign users. Later in 1970s when PLAAF got their hand on another AIM-9E from USAF, they reverse-engineered it and made PL-2B with better rocket engine and fixed the long-lasting problem of the fuse would go off before hitting its target.
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 weapon;
- references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.
External links
Paste links to sources and external resources, such as:
- topic on the official game forum;
- encyclopedia page on the weapon;
- other literature.
