While a graph like that is handy, the issue I had is yes, the missile is about an inch wider and a little over a foot and a half longer- the missile is also claimed to be nearly 30-40 pounds lighter, which means the missile either has;
A) Much smaller electronic components, which is unlikely given the range it’s designed for.
B) much lighter missile frame material which is also unlikely without some unique, special blend of alloys that every other major power so far hasn’t used.
C) A more powerful fuel mixture per unit mass, which is plausible if the fuel is known to be carcinogenic which is why other nations have banned it’s use.
D) The lofting trajectory is much higher than other medium-body missiles, which would make the missile vulnerable during mid-course when outside of an atmosphere thick enough to make corrections via aero-foils.
Outside of that, the missile claims to go up to Mach 5 which is 1 Mach faster than the publicly listed range for the AIM-120 models for example, which would be their closest competition for solid rocket, upper/exo atmospheric pathing. it also doesn’t account for the claimed 10-70nm advantage in ideal conditions unless one party is lying about the capacity of their missiles, or the numbers to achieve the figures.
I’m not arguing the impact speed half of it, only that back of the hand math suggests something is being left out.
It’s brute force in the sense that it’s using a larger missile to achieve higher and farther speeds. Dual pulse probably is going to win over ramjets though outside of some special niches that I forsee just due to travel speeds mostly.
it’s not always the smaller the better. At the beginning, 203mm size was chosen for backward technology, but it do gives advantage in future upgrade. AIM-120D has already reached its extreme, still hard to catch up
from some analysis I saw, ramjets have very special characters in ballistics, makes it not so easy to use, CN and US researched this too but both give up.
most improvement in missiles are improved electronics, make the electronic cabin smaller so the engine can be longer. Like MICA NG to MICA, DERBY ER to DERBY.
the new PL-12AE also used new technology as PL-15, makes it reaching 145km, but still worse than PL-15E due to bigger fins and possibly no dual pulse.
Did not say smaller was better, just that it was brute-forcing the problem because ultimately there is no more room to improve the missiles as of now.
Hence why I said, niche uses. They have better flight envelopes when in thicker atmosphere due to being powered the entire time from my understanding compared to single/dual stage or single/dual pulse motors, however, their transit time for high-altitude firing is still quite a bit less than previously mentioned motor styles.
30km shots are a though proposition for ANY top tier missile. Aim120 can do them better sure but its still not good at it, at those ranges a missile can be defeated by just not flying straight at the missile
I severy doubt this, meteor is a missile that exists already and if is the best missile in its class even when disregarding its longer range its capable of loitering and changing targets. Meteor isnt the fastest sure but irl its not particularly relevant.
Dual pulse is of course extremely relevant but for medium range missiles ramjets are the way to go imo. They simply allow longer ranges for now.
@Monika_in_action could you pass these to the devs as well? CBR managers should not be the one to turn these interviews with designers down as invalid sources when they probably don’t have any better documentation and so no base to reject these.
At least Ordnance Industry Science & Technology is a respectable magazine in the field, and would be better that using whatever values randomly made-up.
Ramjets are not the way to go. Otherwise AIM-260 would have used it. It’s got a couple of issues: 1. expensive, 2. Less versatile in closer ranges, 3. performance varies with alt, 4.Also too big to fit in stealth fighters.
It also doesn’t outperform R37 in longer ranges as neither will have good chance to kill as at that range it is pretty consistent in dodging, and the main use of R37 as said was to force jets off designated missions and into defensive manoeuvres.
these missiles arent meant for close range lol why would you use a meteor when iris t is a choice, permance varying with altitude is not a big problem as it applies to conventional rocket motors too although not to the same degree. its not to big to fit in stealth fighters at all either it will be integrated in f35 soon its just a matter of time and size isnt the main reason why it hasnt been integrated yet.
no shit it doesnt outperform a r37 in range, its a much bigger missile, and the r37m isnt meant to take out fighters the meteor is, the r37 is very fast but its not very maneuverable and if fired from max range which is what russians did ukranians got plenty of time to defend or retreat, which is what they did as r37m mostly got mission kills.
meteor is a whole other kind of missile, it pulls as much as it would ever need to and bleeding its speed is a nonstarter.
and one thing you forgot to mention about meteor, is that its as close to a stealth missile as we ever got
like comparing a missile meant to take out awacs and tankers to a missile meant to take out fighter is a pretty dumb thing to do. the r37m is talked about so much because its legit the only option russian fighters have to engage ukranian aircraft, anything else is too dangerous.
and one last thing, aim260 is a project that is absolutely needed by the us, it not using ramjets which is a very new thing as far as using it in a a2a missile is not a surprise, they need the aim260 fast. the last time the us dabbled with ramjets in weapon was the 60s.
The r-37m is definitely meant to take out fighters, it literally says on the export brochure and it has a target overload of 8g, plenty to hit fighters and is advertised as capable of hitting fighters.
To be fair, Russia also says the Khinzal is a ‘hypersonic’ and that it ‘cannot be intercepted’, even though the V-2 rocket was nearly hypersonic by the shear basis of going nearly Mach 5- so I always take Russian equipment with a grain of salt.
And this is very, very relevant. If you have two missions with data-link capacity, like the Meteor and the PL-15/120D/AAM-4B, etc etc, that means the launching aircraft can fire and forget, and bugger off a whole lot sooner and have their missiles arrive on target first, with accurate guidance.
Take away your datalink, and the launching aircraft still can turn away with it’s missiles still engaging the target to better notch, crank, or otherwise defensively react against the meteor that is still taking it’s sweet time to get to a target. Going say, half the speed in transit on average means it’ll take twice as long to get to a target, a target that knows you’re there in this case and has fired on you, likely having a range advantage, and forcing you to go defensive well before your missiles have gone fully autonomous and after the opposing aircraft has already gone defensive
This is the export variant, not even the one used by the russian airforce, which has double the range. why lie on the export variant? anyways this is offtopic so lets go to the su-27 forum or something else to discuss this
8 g would mean a overload of at most 22/24 gs. Its not meant to tale out fighters, it can its still a dxtremely fast missile with a big warhead but its not meant to do so, and no its not “plenty” to hit targets its the bare minimum, anything less and it would be trivial to dodge, we know of its perfomance against what are very outdated fighters, even if we take into account ukranian modernization packages(which im skeptical how many are implemented) the su27s and mig29 sre very outdated the f16s are less so but even then.
