Your little screen-shot there was from the moment it was ejected, as you can clearly tell the missiles rocket-motors haven’t even fired…
As you can clearly see here, on the motor start:
Roughly 3/4 of a foot/a foot, of sag.
Then when the motors are fully fired:
1.5-2.5 feet of drop, minimum, 3 at a max.
No, it has an on-board guidance system, it’s not ballistically fired (I.e. A gun-launcher system) so it doesn’t have a FCS, the human operator is the FCS.
That’s the wires response time, meaning that, the further away the missile is, the longer the time to make a trajectory calculation takes, and therefore takes a second to properly align itself if it over-shoots. This means, essentially, that the TOW at .5km has 9” of leighway for possible error, and 30” nearing a kilometer.
When in doubt, physics it out.
Earths gravitational Force is 9.508 m/s, meaning that, the missile, which has a force of 22lbs on the launcher, meaning that, once exiting the launcher, has 22lbs of force exerted in a downward manner, at an acceleration of 9.508m/s. A meter is 3.3 feet, at a velocity of 9.805 m/s, the missile will fall approx. 1.7 meters, or 5’6” in .18 seconds, which some of is cancelled out by the forward launch direction. In short, yes, it very much can fall that much, that fast. God, I love how much 9th grade physics taught me.
Thanks for coming and listening to my Ted-Talk.
