: how does a air-air missile track an aircraft that is constantly changing it’s direction while also traveling supersonic?
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The missle tracking is not perfect btw. As you could read from other commands, missles have advantages to a hunan, but they have limited fuel and can loose momentum when they have to make a big course adjustemt on a long distance if the missle is heading to where its targed should have been.
Depends on the type of guidance. For short ranges Air to air guides to the strongest heat source and will actuate its fins to adjust course. The amount the fins need to actuate is dependant on velocity and air pressure. Given the missile can travel at much higher speeds than aircraft and is verified at said speeds it should have a high probability of kill. There are other tracking methods at much longer ranges such as datalinking which allows the missile to piggyback of the host aircraft’s data providing information of where its intended target is, and once the missile reaches the desired range of its own onboard radar (known as a seeker in technical terms) it will utilise its own data for the endgame intercept.
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How does chaff work against a heat seeking missile?? Or is there a different kind of anti-missile tech used for heat seekers?
You don’t do any quick direction changes while flying supersonic. The missile is also flying supersonic but faster than the aircraft. Tracking is done by light so it doesn’t matter if it’s supersonic since light is faster than sound.
Why does everyone think a missile can out turn a jet? It assure you it cannot.
Air to Air missiles generally travel about Mach 4. They are long round narrow tubes with little stubby wings on them. It’s like an arrow. Yes, there is no human in it to be subject to G forces, however, The missile’s speed combined with a lack of substantial winged surface area make tight turns an impossibility. Most jets top off well below Mach 2 and almost their entire surface is a lifting body. A jet’s turning radius is WELL below that of a missile. The problem a jet has is that it’s traveling too slow. Missiles don’t chase & catch up to jets in a turn. They cut them off.
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn’t. By subtracting where it is from where it isn’t, or where it isn’t from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn’t, and arriving at a position where it wasn’t, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn’t, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn’t.
In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn’t, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn’t. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was.
The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn’t, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn’t, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn’t be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error./j
A lot of other people have explained guidance technology, but i’m guessing your question is more about the mechanics of actually getting from point a to point b.
Missiles usually have accelerometers installed that tell them how fast they (the missile) are going and in what direction. Their guidance package is used to track the target in relation to their own heading, it also collects information about which direction the target is moving and how fast. After all of that it’s just math to compute and follow an intercept course. And that’s what they do.
Because to a missile with radar/infra-red detection and computer navigation and tracking, it isn’t actually moving that fast.
Modern weapon systems can track targets via radar in times that are, really, minute fractions of a second and work out where the course is a very long way away, calculate an intercept course and keep doing so.
It’s like saying how can a human identify where a tortoise is walking and move to intercept it? Because to a human, the tortoise is moving pretty slowly and we’ve got lots of time to look at its path and work out where to walk to catch up with it.
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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