Missile behavior

Machinery of War Discussion
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1

When a target is beyond the range of a missile, is the missile meant to detonate after traveling a set distance, or after the guidance time battery runs out?
I ask this because when doing some testing with the Hellfire and JAGM, if you launch it at something outside its stated range, it will detonate the second it hits its stated max range (plus about 0.1km or so) despite having plenty of energy and guidance time left.

Hellfire

Hellfire_statcard

According to its statcard (and the missile spreadsheet) the Hellfire has a maximum guaranteed range of 8km and a guidance time of 45 seconds.
When testing in a custom battle, it can go a tiny bit beyond its max stated range and still hit. I believe this shot was at about 8.05km.

But when I fire it at at around 8.2 or 8.3km, it detonates midair after having traveled just over 8.1km and flying for 34.8 seconds, despite it having plenty of speed left to keep going and 10.2 seconds of guidance time remaining.
Traveling 8.1km in 34.8 seconds puts it at an average speed 232.76 m/s. If it were to travel with that average speed for its entire guidance time, it would be able to travel ~10.5km, close to it’s publicly stated range (guaranteed max range of 8km, can still hit out to ~11km)

JAGM

War Thunder Screenshot 2026.09.18 - 17.23.40.86

According to its statcard (and the missile spreadsheet) the JAGM has a maximum guaranteed range of 16km and a guidance time of 75 seconds.
When testing in a custom battle, it can go a tiny bit beyond its max stated range and still hit. I believe this shot was at about 16.1km

But when I fire it at at around 16.2 or 16.3km, it detonates midair after having traveled just over 17.6km (the much further distance traveled is thanks to the JAGM’s improved lofting over the Hellfire in game) and flying for 69.8 seconds, despite it having plenty of speed left to keep going and 5.2 seconds of guidance time remaining.
Traveling 17.6km for 69.8 seconds puts it at an average speed 252.15 m/s. If it were to travel with that average speed for its entire guidance time, it would be able to travel ~19km, which is closer to what it likely should be, because the JAGM-MR is supposed to roughly double the range of the JAGM, which itself is supposed to have roughly the same range of the Hellfire. The first JAGM was just an improved guidance section strapped to the motor of an AGM-114R after all.

This likely applies to many other missiles as well, but these were the only 2 I either had access to or felt like testing. Is this an intended feature, or is this something that should be bug reported?

2

there are hard range limits set in the files

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3

Interesting. Why would they force a missile to self destruct despite having plenty of energy and guidance time left? IRL nobody would ever design a missile that way, it makes absolutely no sense.

4

Personally i think its incase they cant accurately model missile and overtune it, and to make sure it doesnt exceed certain thresholds the cap things like range

idk tho

5

Well I hope that with all these missile reworks happening, they also do it for air to ground missiles and fix this.

6

mavericks desperately need this so they can actually go 20KM instead of falling like rocks

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7

only Air to air´s as of now are slated to be reworked, eg R-Darter, R-series of missiles, AIM-9´s and the Python (SAM)

whatever the last one means, i hope its not only the Spyders PY5 but also the PY3

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8

Yeah theres a bug report about it being way to draggy that got accepted. But IIRC that was years ago

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9

Maybe theres just something I missed, but I think they just said those were the ones coming next, and they didn’t say anything about not doing AGMs

10

i gotta be real idt they gonna do them soon, they are more likely to get everything ready for 5th gens and next gen A2A weapons

11

On one of their socials (twitter I think?) they said that IR missiles are being worked on next, didn’t say anything about air to ground.