: how does a air-air missile track an aircraft that is constantly changing it’s direction while also traveling supersonic?
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Basically, the missile is much better at turning, and much faster than the plane, and is mart enough to fly an intercept course rather than flying straight at it, but where it will be when the missile gets there.
For any air vehicle, turn rates increases with airspeed until such speed where turning would break the aircraft at which point the turn rates begins to drop.
The missile has a dramatically higher maximum turn rates and speed compared the plane. But the missiles motor burns out shortly after launch so it’s constantly losing speed. It loses speed faster when making corrections. The same applies to the evading plane even though his engine is still burning.
The plane doesn’t need to turn faster than the missile. It needs to turn fast enough and fly fast enough to move the intercept point faster than the missile can turn. But this is ordinarily impossible because the missile is really good at turning. If the pilot can make the missile slow down enough while still flying fast enough he can evade the missile. Usually he can’t and kaboom.
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