AAM shelf life

One would think that temperature cycling isn’t all that great for solid propellant either. Any idea how many flights the typical AAM can endure before it has to go back to the shop for a thourough look over?

that’s true, more importantly, water condensation then absorbtion into the solid binders. But, IIRC, the rockets are sealed until fired?

for the missile itself, mainly two components…the batteries and the rocket motor. The battery has a typical shelf life of 10 years (IIRC). The rocket motor’s actual shelf life (instead of stated) for solid engines are most likely much longer than 10 years. That’s the advantage of solid fuels. However, liquid fuel may have fuel corrosion and condensation issues. As to the carriage life, it’s based also on aircraft type and missile placement positions. The AMRAAM has uses an accelerometer (IIRC) to keep track of the vibrational time history for this.

One would think that temperature cycling isn’t all that great for solid propellant either. Any idea how many flights the typical AAM can endure before it has to go back to the shop for a thourough look over?

Thank guys for the info!

for the missile itself, mainly two components…the batteries and the rocket motor. The battery has a typical shelf life of 10 years (IIRC). The rocket motor’s actual shelf life (instead of stated) for solid engines are most likely much longer than 10 years. That’s the advantage of solid fuels. However, liquid fuel may have fuel corrosion and condensation issues. As to the carriage life, it’s based also on aircraft type and missile placement positions. The AMRAAM has uses an accelerometer (IIRC) to keep track of the vibrational time history for this.

Shelf life is how long you can store the missile before it needs major reworking (most likely issue: your solid propellant has turned into something no longer resembling propellant). Air life is, for lack of a better explanation, how long the missile will last underwing before all the forces acting on it in flight (acceleration, gravity, etc) render it almost useless (ie, if you fly an AMRAAM for 1500 hours, the electronics inside might be starting to resemble parts from Radio Shack thanks to constant buffeting).

Missile AAM A2G has shelf life + air hours. AA11 has max 8 year shelf life and only 40 hours air life (on aircraft, compare to aim 120 has 1500 air and ? shelf life