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Concept
Infrared homing
Summary
Infrared homing is a 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 "heat-seekers" since infrared is radiated strongly by hot bodies. Many objects such as people, vehicle engines and aircraft generate and emit heat and so are especially visible in the infrared wavelengths of light compared to objects in the background.
Infrared seekers are passive devices, which, unlike radar, provide no indication that they are tracking a target. That makes them suitable for sneak attacks during visual encounters or over longer ranges when they are used with a forward looking infrared or similar cuing system. Heat-seekers are extremely effective: 90% of all United States air combat losses over the past 25 years have been caused by infrared-homing missiles. They are, however, subject to a number of simple countermeasures, most notably by dropping flares behind the target to provide false heat sources. That works only if the pilot is aware of the missile and deploys the countermeasures on time. The sophistication of modern seekers has rendered these countermeasures increasingly ineffective.
The first IR devices were experimented with before World War II. During the war, German engineers were working on heat seeking missiles and proximity fuses but did not have time to complete development before the war ended. Truly practical designs did not become possible until the introduction of conical scanning and miniaturized vacuum tubes during the war. Anti-aircraft IR systems began in earnest in the late 1940s, but the electronics and the entire field of rocketry were so new that they required considerable development before the first examples entered service in the mid-1950s. The early examples had significant limitations and achieved very low success rates in combat during the 1960s. A new generation developed in the 1970s and the 1980s made great strides and significantly improved their lethality.
Official source
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