Rolling a cylindrical airframe costs much less energy than you think (it’s not a plane with wings) and the missile only does it in the terminal phase of the approach where it starts to matter and if the target is heavily manouvering (so the missile has to pull high G-Forces). At Mach >4 you reach a 10 km target in less than 7,5 seconds. Not much time for a plane to do any maneuvering… Actually not even enough to do two changes of direction.
Fun-Fact: Tell the MiG-23 in game that rolling costs much energy. That plane actually accelerates faster while rolling :D
It’s still a cylindrical object. It might have parts sticking out and it also doesn’t seem to be evenly distributed in weight around it’s body… BUT
In general it still rotates around an axis where only very small areas will actually be resisting the roll. It’s only the air intakes in this case that will resist the roll, since the fins will pretty much induce the roll and have limited (although not completely negligible) resistance towards the roll axis.
And given the surface area of the air intakes I don’t think that rolling this missile will consume a crazy amount of energy. Some yes, it still abides the laws of physics but since it will still be powered even in the terminal phase, it will be able to regain that lost energy instead of simply losing momentum.
I could have a whole compilation of r73 shots, but not any for the Aim9m its just a garbage missile. And every other missile are getting buffed, while aim9m has accepted bug reports that has been abandoned. Need IRIS-T at this point, the russians already have it
The IRIS-T can’t “modulate” its thrust. It has a four stage solid fuel booster where every stage (with a different thrust profile) burns for a fixed duration → fixed schedule, no modulation.
The Meteor on the other hand can freely regulate its thrust (except for the first booster stage) as the ramjet can vary its fuel supply as the situation desires.
That’s fully up to the missile controls. For example: If the missile calculates that it won’t run out of fuel no matter the thrust, it will immediately go to full thrust to reach the target as fast as possible. Or, if the outer target is at the border of the engagement range, it will cruise at minimal thrust to enhance its range to the maximum. The moment it calculates that it has reserves (because the target approached the missile) it will accelerate again. So really, it is totally dependent on the situation how the missile will regulate its thrust. I would even guess, that it will reduce its thrust to make sharp turns.
Theoretically it could even go onto a ballistic path (like the AIM-120), shutdown its engine with a following glide phase and reignite it when the situation allows or calls for it. This is possible as its fuel (Borane) self-ignites the moment it gets into contact with oxygen.
There is not really anything known about the manueverability of the Meteor. It has no thrust-vectoring AFAIK and only its tail fins for control, but these are designed as stabilators so they can use their complete surface for the steering of the missile. Additionally the Meteor was more designed for range than manueverability.
How the missile behaves exactly, especially at speeds Mach >4, I don’t know.
The missile doesn’t use its fins to turn in the traditional sense.
The missile is statically unstable and the fins are there to induce angle of attack, the misisle then uses body lift and its motor to generate the turning force.
This is the exact same kind of ignorant nonsense used for the Stinger misisle G loads…
Bug report went out too soon tbh, now it will be even harder to get them to change their minds.
That is a developer answer that tech mod added in the comment.
If you have any documents that could halp with this one, that are free to use ofc, I would be grateful for sharing them.
