An all-aspect

air-to-air missile An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft (including unmanned aircraft such as cruise missiles). AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid-fuel roc ...

can track a target no matter which way the target faces relative to the missile. In other words, an all-aspect missile can be launched against a target not only in a tail-chase engagement, but also in a head-on engagement, in a side-on engagement, from above, from below, etc. This is opposed to older

infrared homing Infrared homing is a Missile guidance#Passive homing, passive weapon guidance system which uses the infrared (IR) light emission from a target to track and follow it seamlessly. Missiles which use infrared seeking are often referred to as "he ...

rear aspect missiles which were only able to track the hot engine exhaust of an aircraft if the aircraft's engine exhaust was pointing towards the missile seeker, and thus were only successfully used in tail-chase engagements. Examples include the US AIM-9 Sidewinder (AIM-9L and later), the Russian Vympel R-73 and the Israeli

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. () is an Israeli Defense contractor, defense technology company. It was founded as Israel's National R&D Defense Laboratory for the development of weapons and military technology within the Ministry of Defens ...

Python 5 air-air/ground-air missile.

References

Missile guidance {{missile-stub