25km "Tweener" SAM/AAM

[sinful bane]

It occurred to me that there is a clear unfilled range band both between 15km RAM-45 and 50+km Stratolance as well as between 15km S3 and 40+km AAM-29, which could be filled by an all-purpose 25km, 3x0.3m size missile, presumably radar-guided, sort of like MBDA's MICA, though potentially with a unique seeker (See below). As an AAM, its advantages would be, basically, that it gets radar guidance with the S3's space requirements and with greater range than the S3 in exchange for less maneuverability than an S3, and much less Delta-V than a Scythe. The idea is to give some aircraft, like Compass and Vortex a way to pack more medium-range missiles. If necessary to keep it from overshadowing the S3, it could be limited to pylons already wired for radar missiles (so, Compass could still only carry it on inner pylons, and maybe internally, but gets twice as many per pylon- 4-6 "Tweener"s instead of 2 Scythes, Vortex could carry 4 in its inner bay rather than 2 scythes).

In ground-launched configuration it would operate like a mid-range Stratolance, with stationary launchers and a director radar, but be air-deployable in the form of a lightweight launcher (Trailer or LCV-25-logistics-variant-based) which can be carried or at least sling-loaded by Ibis (4x1 missiles, like VL-MICA), and a heavyweight HLT-based launcher deployable by Tarantula (4x2 missiles).

Some more out-there ideas might be having it use a dual-mode or variant seeker, to emphasize its nature of being between short-range IRMs and long-range ARHMs: like an IR seeker with terminal SARH, rather than a full ARH seeker. Also, perhaps rather than carrying more missiles than the LCV launcher, the HLT launcher could carry a compact radar allowing it to serve as an expandable self-contained system, in contrast with Stratolance which always requires a separate radar.

[maiden chasm]

From the standpoint of hitting aircraft, the S3 doesn’t effectively 15km of range, IR missiles are only really useful < 3 km out. There’s a range gap of a couple kilometers between the S3 and Scythe, but I kind of feel like a buff to IR seekers would patch that up

[covert spear]

Not super needed, but it would be a nice addidtion
I gotta say I don't think IR guidance followed by SARH makes much sense, lore-wise and from a practical standpoint, maybe it would be better to have datalink guidance with terminal IR homing, like a Fox-2 Scythe

[maiden chasm]

Maybe, I think having the S3 guided like that just be a better solution to me

A dual-phase HLT based AA (that maybe could be transported by the Tarantula 🤞) is a really good idea though

[real oasis]

usually it's SARH with terminal IR

[shy hinge]

MICA VL irl