So far i’ve revised my opinion because people argue from all sides but can any of you prove that 80km is a maximum or just the results of a test with similar parameters as this test for AMRAAM :
No one can prove it so MICA could very well hit beyond that 80km number.
And since MICA is lighter, thiner and has similar burn time to AMRAAM but with more DeltaV it should achieve some close perfromances to what AMRAAM can offer unless MICA drag is that much more important.
so you rather wanna keep it a 50km shitshow because it is good at short ranges?
rename it MICA-IR, make it IR seeker, and will have a deal.
no more RWR warning for you and a close range intended missile that is currently made for short ranges.
Except MICA IR doesn’t just have an IR seeker. IIR would be currently undefeatable with the current flares. And you don’t even make sense at this point because you’d be okay with a nerfed MICA IR but can’t tolerate a “nerfed” MICA EM.
And besides @ron_23 to lighten the argument i’d say Gaijin could lift the 50km barrier at least because even without it it wouldn’t be able to reach the so much claimed 80km anyway except in perfect conditions just as you showed before. Because i agree that i can’t prove it but you’d be positive to say that testing a missile with a closure rate of 1000m/s would be very much uncommon especially if missile test procedures are standardized in NATO that’d mean france cheats for every missile they test which would make very bad marketing which is kinda contradictory.
Imo with missile progression, new SAMs, new weapons such as ARMs that are planned afaik… Imo F3R is kinda the best choice they had as it had a TGP compared to F2 and it allows for a plane that will last in time and allows them to Focus on ground because i dunno if you noticed but this year is clearly not under Air vehicles banner.
what i can say is that the missile currently lack 35% range (of the intended 80km), and kinetics,…
VL testing (at 70°, so favorising the missile speed and range) showed the missile lacked about 0.5 mach speed., and the missile was under 0.85 mach at 13km.
We have archives but they are allowed to give classified documents to public between 50 (For weapons, technologies and vehicles for example) and 100(For people or wars archives) years.