So its well known that SAM have shorter ceiling reach than horizontal travel because of gravity and aerodynamic factors, the range “bubble” isn’t a perfect sphere with a fixed diameter, but in game it seems like Gaijin has modeled it so.
I did a bit of testing with Roland, VT and using the AI ADATS on the test drive, its clear that missiles in game travel vertically as far as they do horizontally, which is very wrong afaik and i have never seen anyone bring up this very shoddy modeling of missile physics.
1 Like
Its modelled. Missiles are physical simulated objects, gravity, drag, etc
But typically the limits of these kinds of SAMs are guidance ones, not how far the missile can physically reach
Range limit of the launchers ability to track the missile, limits of guidance battery life, etc
So they can reach much further horizontally than vertically, they often just lose guidance before that ever becomes a consideration
For example, the Osa-AKM. Ballistically the missile could reach more around 15km horizontally, but the launcher loses track of the missile at ~10.3km
2 Likes
Yes but not exactly for the reason you may think of
The reason the ceiling is so low for most missiles (20-30km usually) is the lack of air for them to maneuver up there, only specialized ones with side thruster can go to stratosphere or even outter space. This max ceiling is usually given by the manufacturer as a reasonable altitude you can hit a target at (and so where the missile has to behave according to specs). Most long range missiles can go much higher however, it’s just that they will be useless up there, basically forced to fly on a ballistic trajectory because no air for the fins to do their job
as for the max range, long range SAMs will adopt a semi-ballistic trajectory (loft), use thin air to cruise and GPE to dive down on their target with enough terminal velocity to still be a threat
On a short range SACLOS SAMs, this doesn’t really apply :
- they don’t loft, they just follow the LOS
- they don’t have enough reach to go at those altitudes, except for Pantsir SM-SV, but i suspect the missile would get despawned upon reaching the map limit (32km) assuming it can go that high
As for gravity slowing down missiles faster than drag, that depends i would say.
Fire a missile on a near horizontal trajectory and see how fast it decelerates (usually, in game it will be between 2 and 5g depending on the missile)
Deceleration due to gravity for a missile going vertical would basically be 1g, then add to that deceleration due to drag. Unlike the missile with a horizontal trajectory however, the one going vertical will meet less air resistance as it climbs up