The AIM-9 Sidewinder is a product of Nighteka Munitions and was produced in the Mojave Desert. It features a lightweight, compact design with cross wings and tail fins. It uses a solid rocket motor for propulsion, similar to most conventional missiles, a continuous-rod fragmentation warhead, and an infrared seeker.

The seeker tracks a difference in temperatures detected and uses proportional guidance to achieve impact. Older variants with uncooled seeker heads could only track the high temperatures of engine exhaust, making them strictly target the rear of aircraft. Later variants, however, featured liquid nitrogen coolant bottles in the launchers, allowing the missile to track any part of the aircraft heated by air resistance due to high-speed flight, giving newer Sidewinders all-aspect capabilities.

The nose wings provide maneuverability for the AIM-9, with the AIM-9 Mini using thrust vectoring control to augment this. The hot gases generated were used to actuate the nose wings in older models, while newer variants use thermal batteries.

To minimize the amount of energy devoted to actuating control surfaces, the AIM-9 does not use active roll stabilization. Instead, it uses rollerons, small metal discs protruding out of the aft end of the tips of the tail fins, which spin as the missile flies through the air, providing gyroscopic stabilization.

The AIM-9 uses a passive infrared proximity fuse to detonate its warhead near an enemy aircraft, scattering shrapnel that aims to damage the aircraft, rendering it inoperable. The continuous-rod warhead features rods welded together to form a cylindrical outer shell, with explosive filler inside. Upon detonation, the rods are scattered in a toroidal shape, ensuring that at least some portion of the shrapnel hits enemy aircraft.

Newer models of the AIM-9 sought to increase the range that the seeker head's gimbal can turn, allowing the missile to track aircraft at greater angles from its direct line of sight, or boresight. Models such as the AIM-9 Mini feature high off-boresight capabilities, meaning they are able to track targets at high seeker gimbal angles, or highly distant from its boresight.