And MICA’s range would allow a greater range against “unaware target or a target who is currently flying away from you”
Sure, speed can have its advantages
But I’m just saying this whole “ASRAAM was designed to be fast because with modern IIR missiles you need to hit the enemy before he hits you” doesn’t even make sense …
If IIR missiles are unavoidable, then merely hitting the enemy before he hits you is not gonna solve your problem … You want to launch before he even has a chance to launch and you need range for that, not just speed …
NG exist tho. It was test fired, trialed and is due to enter service later this year, but that’s beside the point (aside from the fact that it would be able to use its TVC at longer range thanks to the independent dual pulse motor)
Likely wont matter in WT since missile interception is pretty reliable and easy to do, and I doubt gaijin will bother modelling the ability to slave to systems to be used as a hardkill APS.
Theres also technically no proof other missiles cant do it irl beyond the fact that IRIS-T is the only one to mention this capability.
As for the ASRAAM speed vs MICA range discussion, having longer max range does not necessarily mean longer max NEZ. The ASRAAM may be designed to have the largest max NEZ, which would effectively negate the MICAs range advantage. Its possible this is why the UK emphasized the F-pole over total range.
Id like to point out that the F-pole test done likely wasnt a launch at a preset range, but instead a launch at the max range of both missiles respectively. Itd make no sense to compare f-poles at a preset range.
Had a quick look at this. If I am mathing right from my previous classes on supersonic regimes, I got the following Mach speed for different altitude for skin heating on a flat surface (not considering hotspot on the nose)
3km : Mach 4.3
9km : Mach 4.8
15km : Mach 4.96
It seems overall from that that the ASRAAM was developed as a Mach 5 capable missile (at high altitude)
Also, went it comes to missiles destroying other missiles, I think there’s a need to consider the failure rate. Maybe IRIS-T performs better since it was design with this capability in mind, but if it fails, it’s a sure death for the carrier.
If you follow the Onion (don’t be there, don’t be seen, don’t be shot at…), the point were the IRIS-T acts is very close to « don’t die ». The rafale has very recently seen what it is like to relay on hard kill systems, since its SPECTRA jamming was visibly not capable of stoping whatever missile killed it. IRIS-T and other missiles destroying missiles is a last resort that I would not want to use.
That’s also why I’m a bit struggling with the « ASRAAM faster so it’s better » logic, since I would rather want a longer range missile to make sure the enemy just can’t shoot at me, even if I need to wait a few more seconds to kill them
Cuz irl missile interception of small and/or very fast objects is a lot more complex than in-game, and the game likely makes it much too easy for missiles to intercept eachother, to the point of seemingly biasing missile guidance systems towards other missiles instead of the original target.
Not worth a whole lot if you cant make it to the dogfight.
The only time the IRIS-T could be superior is if its missile interception capability is unique to it. This would allow the plane to inercept incoming fox 3’s while you fire back fox 3’s from much more dangerous energy states and ranges, but seeing as ingame missile interception is common, its unlikely to be any good once longer ranged missiles arrive.
Unless you wanted to intercept a drone, or gotten into a regular jet interception that went wrong, I find it pretty unlikely that 2 enemy jets would end up in the range of the IRIS-T, since nowadays even passive detection methods far outrange the practical range of the missile, meaning you’d have fired all your long range fox 3s and longer range than IRIS-T fox 2s at the enemy. So if someone carrying IRIS-T ended up in the practical range to kill an enemy, said enemy would probably have ran out of missiles long ago and would already be going back to safety
Just like ASRAAM has a range advantage over IRIS-T, MICA has a range advantage over ASRAAM
But unlike ASRAAM which is disadvantaged vs IRIS-T at very close ranges, MICA is actually better than ASRAAM at very close ranges, thanks to its thrust vectoring …
People say “But at ranges that MICA out-ranges ASRAAM, EF can just use Meteor or AMRAAM instead”
But the same could be said here … “At ranges that ASRAAM out-ranges IRIS-T, the German EF can just use Meteor or AMRAAM instead”
I don’t see how a 15-20km Meteor / AMRAAM shot would be less lethal than a 50km one …
Stop thinking about range as just distance, it’s about time. There’s a window where ASRAAM will hit the target faster than your BVR missile. If the enemy hasn’t fired yet, the quicker you can hit him the better.
This is not some random theory we’ve made up, it is the stated design philosophy of the ASRAAM programme as laid out in many archived documents. You seem to be mis-understanding the concept behind ASRAAM, so I’ll try to explain it in more depth. Before that I just want to address this point:
Maximum range is not everything. Let’s imagine two hypothetical missiles, both are near impossible to avoid, one has a maximum range of 10 km range and the other 12.5 km range. You can indeed fire your 12.5 km range missile before the guy with his 10 km range missile can fire his missile; however if at any point between you firing your missile and it hitting him the range between your aircraft and his reduces to less than 10 km then he can fire his missile as well. Your missile will then hit him and he will be dead, however his missile is now in the air, so given a few more seconds it will hit you and you’ll be dead too. You can see that simply having a 25% range advantage over your opponent doesn’t solve the problem of modern missiles being extremely hard to dodge. This is where the idea of speed comes in, particularly when you consider that not every engagement will occur at the absolute maximum range of your missile.
Anyway back to this:
As the name suggests ASRAAM is designed to fulfil the role of a Short Range Air-to-Air Missile. By comparison IR MICA was designed to be a pretty unique (how many similar missiles can you name?) hybrid of a short range and medium range missile. ASRAAM is often compared to IR MICA due to them both having a high maximum range compared to other IR missiles, but this is not a particularly helpful comparison because the to missiles were designed for different roles.
Under UK (and let’s be honest - most other countries’) doctrine you have distinct short range (e.g. Sidewinder), medium range (e.g. AMRAAM), and sometimes long range (e.g. Meteor) missiles. ASRAAM was designed to fulfil the role of a short range missile; like the R-73, R-74, IRIS-T, AIM-9X, Python, etc.
At the end of the day not every air-to air engagement occurs at BVR ranges or at the maximum range of your air to air missiles, hence the existence of the aforementioned short range missiles, and why you don’t see Rafales, Gripens, and Eurofighters flying around with nothing but Meteors loaded. You either have to acknowledge that short range missiles like R-73/74, IRIS-T, AIM-9X, etc. have a role, or argue that as an entire class of weapon they are irrelevant these days and all you need are medium / long range missiles.
It is the role of these short range missiles that ASRAAM was originally designed to fill; medium range engagements would be handled by AMRAAM. This brings us back to what I discussed above: at shorter ranges simply getting the first short on a target is not good enough, you need to prevent (or at least minimise the opportunity for) the hostile aircraft firing a missile back at you. This therefore leads to the conclusion that you want your missile to hit the enemy aircraft before they even fire their missile; and so necessitates two key requirements:
Your missile should have a longer range than the enemy’s short range missile
Your missile should be very fast to minimise (or even eliminate) the opportunity for the enemy to respond.
The idea was that against enemy with older (but still very deadly) missiles like R-73 & AIM-9L/M the missile should be so fast that it can be fired and impact the enemy aircraft before the enemy can even get within the front aspect lock range of their missile (making it basically impossible for them to engage you in the frontal aspect - as they would be dead before ever getting a lock). Meanwhile against enemy with more modern missiles the high speed and increased range of your missile should reduce the window the enemy has between getting within range of their missile, and being hit by your missile to an absolute minimum.
It is true that an MICA equipped aircraft can fire their MICA at longer range than the ASRAAM equipped aircraft can fire their ASRAAM. But the ASRAAM was never designed for that situation, if you’re firing a MICA at its maximum range then the ASRAAM equipped aircraft is going to be firing an AMRAAM at you.
