No official confirmation for that but most likely, some people speculate the hexagonal windows behind the nosecone are IIR sensors to allow for guidance at high aspect which would allow it to lead the target without losing lock and would be very useful for a missile with high loft that falls on top of the target.
The AIM-120 doesn’t have a an optimal lofted trajectory because of battery life limitations.
(this is talking about the AIM-120B or early C which have the same motor)
Officially I don’t think it has even been confirmed to be radar guided but we know it is GPS-aided like the AIM-120D.
It also appears to have a conventional datalink antenna so assuming one of the black markings on top is for the GPS it leaves 5 different kinds of different antennas/apertures with unknown purpose.
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PL-15 in games files are just a placeholder if im not mistaken
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yes nothing about it is correct, and the motor is just a modified PL-12 one (aka worse)
also taking anything from the gamefiles is dumb
The total fuel amount of the PL-15 in the files is correct, with the PL-15 being roughly the same size as the PL-12 the fuel amount should be less to make space for the pulse separator device. What has a chance to be tweaked before it comes to the game is the pulse firing logic, how the fuel is distributed beetween the pulses and how fast it burns.
That is assuming the other sections aren’t shrunk to lend more space to the motor section. For instance, the AIM-260 has similar dimensions to the AIM-120, but an analysis based on public imagery by Shi et al. in Aero Weaponry suggests that the motor section of the JATM is roughly 28% longer than that of the AMRAAM. We might get more information about the PL-15’s internal layout if India publishes findings on the debris they recovered last year.
Maybe but with with the fuel amount it has in the files it should good enough to reach the advertised 300km so no chance for big buffs in that regard
its fucking not lmao what are you on about, the weight of the entire missile aint even correct, and the PL-15 is round 6 cm longer aswell, if anything its fuel mass should be comparable to the PL-12AE.
it should also be very obvious that the PL-15 in the files is not anywhere close to complete or realistic, as most of its stats are literally pre- nerf PL-12/pre-current-PL-12, only the motor was changed prolly for testing
nowhere is 300km advertised afaik highest youll see is >145km for the PL-15E (which it cant even ingame do currently, as like said above is a C&P PL-12 with a different motor)
Please just stick to AIM-120/260/424 stuff
What currently limits the range of the PL-15 in the files isn’t the amount of fuel itself but the pulse firing logic and battery time. Those and the aerodynamics of the old PL-12 are the real factors making it a placeholder.
According to statshark with the current pulse firing logic it doesn’t fire the second pulse at all if fired from long distance. By just tweaking the pulse firing logic, battery time and the loft angleI managed to make it hit a target from a firing distance of 300km and 210km of flight distance. If they update the aerodynamics it will reach even farther.
there is also the fact that par the diameter every other stat is wrong (weight, length), fuel mass i dont wanna argue over but its prolly wrong
Literal worst-case for PL-15 is PL-12AE(or base PL-12) with dualpulse and hardcap to 145km
I was referring to the physical seam lines on the missile’s skin, not the color bands. The red arrow in the image I posted is pointing towards the seam between the motor section and warhead. There’s another visible seam on the other side of the gray color band between the warhead and guidance sections too. These are what I was using the measure the length of the motor section.
Funny thing i did here, using AARGM-ER motor specs but with AIM-54C+ loft logic and 400kg of propellant for the motor (assuming some upgrades to Mk104 motor that has 372kg of propellant, boosted up to 400kg (HLG?))
12s of ~24kN + 159s of ~4,2kN; 45km of altitude seems a little too much for a “conventional” missile tho;;; almost no value in this, but its fun
Some sources says the burn time for the Mk104 is around 29s; could do something more precise with this info later
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in this video on the timestamp you can see a sm-2 detaching from the mk-72 booster, then you can see the majority of the burn of the mk-104, unfortunately there are some clouds near the end of the burn but i think the burn time is 34-33 seconds (?)
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using 400kg/34 would be 11,x kg/s of burn, AAM-4 booster in game burn around that value, having 27kN of thrust; the missile would hit 2000m/s (mach 6.76) on the climb for a few seconds and loft to 50km; i dont see Gaijin implementing the missile like this in game
of course would be much more complex to model it properly in game
372kg/34 would be 10,x; almost the same as AARGM-ER booster, providing 24kN of thrust
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idk how the engine properties would be like, probably less fuel than 400kg realistically
the loft however i think its unlikely it would loft to 50km, this is from a document talking about a new 21 inches second stage motor for the standard missile family which eventually became the 21 inches motor used on the 2nd stage of the sm-3 block IIA (?), the interesting part of the document for the loft topic is this graph
Spoiler
21 inches standard
despite these missiles having big wings and fins they can’t loft beyond ~30km due to the atmosphere getting too thin, i think this isn’t altitude isn’t going to be much different from any other missile that doesn’t have alternate methods to mantain control in flight
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The “”“OG”“”" Mk104 weights 500kg loaded and 128kg unloaded, so 372kg of propellant; the 400kg was just a theorical upgrade (Raytheon and Anduril tested some High Loaded Grain motor, and AIM-424 is made by Raytheon; but absolutely no source about that)
With HLG, the % of binder can be reduced so between that, other potential HLG improvements, and better made motors that hold more propellant 400kg not a bad approximation imo
Lofting beyond 30km of altitude is basically mandatory to achieve ranges of more than 200km without a ramjet. Losing almost all aerodynamic control for the majority of the flight is something that is expected from all long range air to air missiles and not something that needs to be avoided.
i think we’re heading off in the wrong track with assuming theyre using the mk104
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The form factor is VERY similar to SM-2, i wouldnt be surprised they just pulled out another AIM-174B moment (SM-6) but with bigger changes, SM-2 uses Mk104. Mass is also similar, 707kg for SM-2 (wikipedia) vs 680kg for AIM-424
but is just a theory
