iirc, the RAF basically realised that with how advanced IIR seekers are and how difficult they are to defeat, that if you had to aircraft with similar range weapons fire at each other, they would both die most of the time.
So instead the ASRAAM was created with a “shoot first, Kill first” philopshy. The entire design is based around the idea of killing your target before they can kill you. Which is why speed was the most important attribute for the ASRAAM. Range just came from having all that speed.
And if you are both within ASRAAM’s range, and you both launch, yes, perhaps you will get the kill first, but you still have a missile coming your way.
So “hit a target before he gets a chance to hit you” is actually not that great.
But range enables you to “hit a target before he gets a chance to launch at you” …
The point is though, in ranges where MICA IR would hold an advantage over ASRAAM, The Typhoon wont be firing an ASRAAM, it will be firing a Meteor, and to that end, I doubt the Rafale would be firing a MICA either, instead they too would be firing a Meteor.
But the same argument holds for the use of the ASRAAM. In the range a typhoon can fire an ASRAAM, both would have fire meteors…
Also, the use case of the IR in this case is for undetected long range shots, in which case the MICA would have the range advantage, whereas the ASRAAM would be able to capitalize on the Rafale mistake of going in the range of the ASRAAM
They could technically add a way to turn radar altimeter off (say game option), and you could turn it off without losing much …
MAW on the other hand, is quite critical and will become even more critical moving forward … You will lose a significant defensive capability by turning it off …
Radar altimeter is honestly currently more of a “cool factor” can’t remember the last time I actually used it … Due to measuring the altitude directly below you it’s not even that useful for avoiding terrain in Gaijin’s fantasy world that sometimes is completely covered by clouds …
Plus, almost all (top tier) planes have radar altimeters, but not all planes have a radar based MAW …
It makes sense when you consider the design philosophy of the missile. The basic idea is that modern IR missiles are almost unavoidable, therefore if one is fired at you then you’re probably dead, at which point you don’t really care whether you kill him or not.
Therefore it is reasoned that the only way to reliably win such an engagement is to kill the enemy before they have a chance to fire their missile. So you need a missile that so fast enough that you can fire it and have it impact the enemy aircraft before the enemy has the chance to fire their own missile in return.
