Missiles locking onto other missiles

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
1

How realistic is it that missiles with a clear lock onto an enemy jet exhaust just switch to tracking an air to air missile the jet they were just tracking fired?

I am talking about non IRCCM missiles here because I get really annoyed when I get a nice lock onto an enemy jet that is distracted by someone else and as soon as my missile leaves the rail they fire a missile and mine just starts following theirs and I don’t get the kill.

Is there any precedent for this and how does the weird way the game calculates IR signatures factor into this?

2

While the motor is burning, the missile will be much hotter than the jet. It will effectively act as a flare if it is within your missile’s seeker.

This is why people in flareless jets may use rockets as a form of flares.

3

Most missile booster are solid fuel which usually burn at 2k+ C which is way more than a jet engine even while afterburning.

4

I guess it’s realistic then.

Still damn annoying when it happens

5

Dunno. Wouldn’t you construct AAMs in a way they simply wouldn’t follow targets which move too fast, burn too hot and are much smaller? Just to make sure the tracks the enemy jet and nothing else.

6

IR missiles don’t care about speed they just go for the strongest IR signature

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7

IR missiles only care about heat. Nothing else. If its hotter than the target, it’ll go for it.
IRCCM tries to avoid losing lock by lowering FOV or shutting off its seeker when it detects something hotter in its range.

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8

They do have that for modern IR missiles. They have ways to filter out flares.

This topic is about non-IRCCM seekers.

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9

Yeah, in the 90s. Do you really think they were thinking of this with the AIM-9B and AIM-9J?

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