Kh-25ML

Description

The Kh-25ML is a Soviet laser-guided air-to-ground missile. It was introduced in Update "Direct Hit".

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

General info

Effective damage

Describe the type of damage produced by this type of missile (high explosive, splash damage, etc)

Comparison with analogues

Give a comparative description of missiles that have firepower equal to this weapon.

Usage in battles

There is no effective, practical usage for the Kh-25ML in combat, due to the extreme limitation in target acquisition capability of aircraft equipped with this missile. This makes it very difficult to utilize the Kh-25ML's long range and high average flight speed. Thus, the Kh-25ML is best in PvE game modes where the enemy marker is visible and can be used to compensate the poor zoom in the targeting view.

To use the Kh-25ML: 1. Fly your aircraft with the nose directly towards the target as if you are using MCLOS-guided AGM, like the AGM-12 Bullpup. 2. Warm up the missile by pressing the Weapon lock (air-to-ground) button. 3. Switch to the targeting view. You must acquire a target before you switch since the lack of effective zoom in the targeting view makes it unsuitable for visual target acquisition. 4. Press the Toggle Laser Designator button to active the laser target designator. 5. Wait for the missile prompt to change from grey ACQ to red TRK. 6. Fire the missile and keep the crosshair overlapped on the enemy marker. 7. Switch out of the targeting view and wait for impact. Due to the low zoom, any mouse movement will translate into a very large shift in the laser designated position, which will easily cause the missile to lose track of the target or jerk out of control; thus exiting the targeting view can eliminate this possibility.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Very long burning rocket motor (2 seconds booster, 8 seconds sustainer) providing much higher average flight speed than other AGM in game
• Large warhead that guarantees the destruction of a well-armoured MBT even when missed by a few metres

Cons:

• Uses proportional guidance, prone to sudden movement if launch platform does not have automated target tracking capability
• Most soviet aircraft that carry this missile have almost non-existent zoom in targeting view. Which makes Kh-25ML unusable in Simulator battles and Ground Realistic battles. Since pilot can only reliably visually spot target within 4 km, and small turret traverse angle preclude circling battlefield for usage of Mark I eyeball
• Need to activate laser designator and warm up missile separately. Even if the pilot spotted a target, due to the high speed of the carrying aircraft, by the time pilot activates laser designator and warm up the missile, pilot will be within 2 km of target, which may well give up on Kh-25ML and use guns instead, or carry dumb bombs in the first place

History

Examine the history of the creation and combat usage of the weapon in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too long, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the weapon and adding a block "/History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Weapon-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref></ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article with <references />.

Media

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See also

Related development

• Kh-25

External links

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• topic on the official game forum;
• other literature.