Aim 120d3 should be around 185 km conservative according to a Chinese study
Eh I was conservative, public figures are between 140/160 kilometers, longest public shot is 163 kilometers afaik, and that record was beaten twice if I recall right with one of the time being publicized recently(no number but it was a F-22 firing it)
Loft should not have been needing improvement, improvements in kinematics must have been made with changes to weight and battery life. Solving simple loft trajectories was done before computers existed and even the 60s computers could calculate those with minimal computing power or resources, they did so to go to the moon.
The AIM-120 is a 90s missile, it should have more than sufficient computing power to handle proper loft. The AIM-54 made the final improvements in the 80s prior.
What we know about the AIM-7 and AIM-9’s is that propellant improvements were made to production motor batches over the course of their service life. These improvements only show up in documentation when the changes warrant testing due to concerning factors like whether or not it might have bonding issues to the case liner etc. If these issues are not suspected, there is no need for testing and thus no need to include these classified changes in budgeting reports.
AIM-120 combined plane overload is supposed to be like 40 or 45G, right now it does what 35G single plane? That doesn’t make sense because 35G single plane would max out at 50G dual plane. I don’t know where they got the figure for 35G single plane.
Then again, this argument was had by Gunjob to justify the nerfing of the R-27, when in reality a missile can pull X in single plane and doesn’t need to also pull Y (the maximum) dual plane G limit… HAWK for example has a 20G limit whether in single or dual plane, so it limits itself to that regardless of plane.
tl;dr 35G single plane indicates a maximum potential of 50G dual plane, but the flight computer might limit the missile overall G load to less than the maximum theoretical dual plane overload anyway if there are structural or aerodynamic constraints.
Would be funny if they beat it by like 0.001km and thus they haven’t publicized the actual improvement.
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not just loft
modern missiles rely much on the guidance program, a good guiding program can save a lot of energy and extending the range
I was using layman’s terminology for this stuff, but I’ll reiterate–energy savings that could have been done had already been made when the AIM-120 entered service. Any subsequent improvements were made thanks to changes in missile characteristics such as reduced weight, different motor, or reconfiguration of internals. Sometimes, (AIM-120C-3) it was done due to physical shape changes, etc. Yet, none of these were improvements on the existing algorithms. They just changed things to adjust for other factors.
So when the AIM-120D made improvements that extended range, it was really shorthand for something changed (be it reduced weight, stuff was moved around, battery life increased, whatever)… and any subsequent guidance changes to accommodate these realized the range benefits from the changes.
If it was just programming changes to improve the guidance algorithms, they’d have retrofit every previous missile with these benefits and it would not be solely an AIM-120D feature.
it would be funny, and as far as the f22 shot its highly unlikely as the f22, but the previous f15 shot? i dont see that exceeding the previous f15e record by that much.
AIM-120s currently don’t even pull 35G, they pull like 28G at best in the best possible situations because gaijin butchered their AoA from the realistic 30° to around 24°, making them unable to achieve their actual maneuverability.
I don’t know that 30 degrees is realistic, the Phoenix max AoA for comparison is about 19 degrees sustained AoA irl.
I think G pull at lower speeds and turn radius is wrong but the AoA is probably about accurate.
This guy can probably share the documents from which he made the report on the C at least. Also the discussion over at the AIM-120 thread indicated that the A and B should have the same AoA back when it was first nerfed.
And a report for it being unable to reach 35G, which a classic response from the developers who are wrong.