The Phoenix missile is a very deadly missile. The 6 on 6 test proved to be very accurate, and those were the very early 54a model. Then again we can refer to the Iran-Iraq war, where the Iranians had tons of kills from the Phoenix missile. They proved to be very accurate and deadly against Iraqi fighters. The Phoenix is believed to be designed for Bomber size targets, at least I hear that a lot. Although this was one of the primary threats, they were not designed strictly for this purpose. The were also design to intercept ICBM's flying super sonic and cruise missiles that fly very close to the ground. The cold war threat were Russian bombers, but was mostly Nuclear weapons, i.e ICBMs. The phoenix has been proving to track targets at very high altitudes and right down to 50 ft off the ground. They were very hard to jam, especially the 54c models. One reason why when an enemy fighter received an alert that they were being tracked or locked by a Tomcat, they turned around and left. They knew how deadly the Tomcat/Phoenix combo was. Check out this video and see what you think.....
