VL MICA SAM - History, Design, Performances & Discussion

I guess i was not precise enough.
I did not meant 2 stage as with a discarding booster.
I meant burning stages, and you can see, unlike other missiles, there is no divide inside the motor section on roxel page.

1 Like

Yes we’ve had that conversation already. I’ve also stated that a boost-sustainer modeling in-game gives a better accurate modeling of a boost-only missile due to better modeling the ramp-up and ramp-down in thrust of missiles.

1 Like

Okay that makes a lot more sense.

Don’t believe that is the case, the ramp up and ramp down contribute about <5% of the time. And the change in thrust through the burn itself is close enough to be easily averaged. The only way you would model two burns would be a boost boost motor, which again wouldn’t make much sense to model.

I don’t think the size should be taken into account too much, since the diameters and shapes are all over the place, but it gives a bit more info on MICA NG’s 3rd stage (maybe 2nd stage then, if the main boost has no sustainer ?)

30 years of electronics development for this little cylindrical section X) :

image

Nothing in that diagram is properly to scale, people really need to stop using it for size comparisons. For example if you assume the width of the air launched MICA to be 160 mm then proportionally it is only 2.6 m long in that image (real missile is 3.1 m long).

Or for another example Meteor is only 6.9% longer than MICA in the diagram, but is 17.7% longer than MICA in real life.

Edit: just realised you were saying it didn’t make sense that VL MICA was on a Roxel website. Thought you were comparing the motor size between the two websites.

It was not for scale, but used to show that Roxel makes the motor

1 Like

Yeah added that in an edit once I realised

2 Likes

Yeah, this diagram looks more to scale. Electronics sections is noticeably smaller.

@DirectSupport did the warhead also get shrunk for MICA NG? Looks a bit smaller in this image.

yeah the diagram is a mess, no missile seems to have its correct dimensions

Regarding the absence of sustainer, i played a bit on statshark (i know it’s not perfect but that’s what we got)

in order to get something that comes anywhere close to a MICA as advertised by MBDA (20km, 30G at 12km), and assuming Fireball estimations are correct you would need to change :

  • Engine : sustainer deletion and booster goes from 20.25KN for 2.75s to 19.2KN for 3.75s
  • Diameter : 165 → 160mm
  • Loft : 5 → 20°
  • Life time : 70 → 120s
  • Drag coefficient : 1.65 → 1.2 (Amraam at 1.42 for reference)

missile would reach mach 2.05 from 0 in this configuration, but it is questionable if it could hit 30G at a mere mach 0.8 at 12km, reducing the drag further would make the missile go further than 20km

Afaik they did not mention any change to the warhead

Someone forgot to tell the devs cuz the MICA in VL config ingame performs almost the same out around the 13km mark, SLM being like M0.1 faster

SLM as currently implemented in game is a sad joke

A close competition with the manpads article we had a few years back imo

1 Like

I don’t believe 1.2 is necessary, about 1.35-1.4 works fine and that is more realistic.

SAMP/T makes literally no sense anyways. Aster 15 isnt fired by land-based systems, and Italy has the Gryfo, which is an EMADS like the British Sky Sabre.

Its pretty weird they didnt add the VL MICA this update considering the substantial nerfs all the other systems received put their missiles in the same perdormance braxket as the VL MICA, but the VL MICA is just a worse system than the SLM and Spyder (even with the nerfs to the others)

yeah, the 4 ready to fire missles hurt quite bad.
And they even already gave the spyder an imaginary 8 launcher version that didnt exist in reality

1 Like

at 1.35, the missile has absolutely no energy past 10km, making it useless

Can’t hit anywhere close to 30G at 12km for sure as it should

Aster-30 sub mach 1 at 10 clicks, brought to you by Gaijin entertainment

From what i’ve seen, it would still be slightly better than SLM and spyder in their current state.
The main issue is that Gaijin seems to think that missiles evolves underwater if they are going over mach 0.8, and then unlocks infinite energy, making them go from 10 to 40 clicks, while it should be a far smoother deceleration.

Even SLM currently has basically no energy at 12km, it would be unable to hit any kind of moving target, while the basic MICA VL is advertised to do so :

That’s just how broken the newly added SPAAs are

Of course, MICA VL being 1990s missile and being lighter than a SLM won’t reach the same ranges, still, it should be a threat up to 12 clicks, not be dead weight by 7.5 clicks like fireball is suggesting

(With 1.35 drag btw @Fireball_2020 )

Spoiler

At this point you might as well add Mistral 3 instead, it would be more efficient than whatever this thing is

It likely can, the speed is about M1, given magic 2 could pull 20G’s at M0.8 that is about right.

Idk what you are testing here.

This ain’t optimal it was just “good enough” for the brief testing i did.