Trigger pull and hold for forward firing weapons

[AH_Solid_Snake]

Just trying to work out what the expected behaviour here is... with jets with a dedicated pickle button such as the F-15 or F-18 you have to press and hold the pickle button for a couple of seconds to trigger a weapon release, just tapping it doesnt seem to be enough.

 

The F-14 instead uses the trigger for all forward firing weapons and from my playing around, although your missile may take a couple of seconds to actually come off the rail you just need a momentary trigger tap for this to occur?

 

Is this just a difference between older / newer navy planes? Did the F-8 or F-4 use the trigger or a pickle button for missiles?

[near_blind]

Trigger versus pickle is a Navy vs Airforce thing. The Navy mechs aircraft such that trigger = weapons that go forward, pickle = things that go down. The Air Force on the other hand generally mechs things such that trigger = gun, pickle = missile/bomb/whatever. The F-4 primarily used the trigger for A/A weapons, however it could actually use both depending on the setting. Don't know about the Crusader but I would assume it too was trigger. 

 

In the F-14 this isn't a safety feature and you don't have to hold the trigger. Broadly speaking, the three second delay is the F-14's fire control system configuring the missile for launch, passing it information on relative location and state of the target so the missile knows how to orient and where to look post separation, and then getting the missile ready to physically disconnect. This time can also be shortened by raising the ACM guard, the system is purposefully skipping steps with the assumption that the target is close enough it won't need the fine configuration and speed is the more salient requirement. 

 

Compared to the F-4, my understanding is there was a similar process where the Sparrow had to synchronize with the radar after getting a valid STT lock, only it was manual. The crew had to remember to wait a certain amount of time before firing the missile otherwise it wouldn't track.

 

With newer jets the hold is probably a combination of transferring target data and a safety interlink to make sure you don't go accidentally rippling missiles off when you don't necessarily want to.