Seeking missile behaviour

Duke

New Member
Hi

We are doing a fly simulator game and wanted to make seeking missile with realistic behaviour and target finding.

I would like to know how different types of seeking missiles behave when they miss a target.
I think that heat seeking missile is not able to turn around after missing a target. (Like in the movies) Is this correct? What will missile actually do after missing it's target? Will it try to turn around, continue straight forward motion, or probably something else?

And what about active and semi-active radar homing missiles?

Thanks,
WBR
 

Go229

New Member
That would depend very much on the generation of those missiles. A first-generation rear aspect Infra-red (that can only see the hot exhaust and tail-chase". If it loses it's target it could relocate on the next hottest source ie: the sun or another aircraft. Those where early cryo-cooled IR sensor, nowadays there are IR digital imagers than can see the actual shape of the target in the IR spectrum and really make evasion difficult.

A semi-active radar guided missile needs the launcher to illuminate the target with the radar (it either ride the beam ie "beamriding" or has a passive radar sensor that sees the radar reflection) so if the radar signal is cut or jammed, that missiles loses guidance unless it can home on a target's turned on radar. That's why today Active-seeker missiles that have their own active radar are used, they can track their own target and are fire-and-forget. No need to leave on the radar all the way in.

The better and more modern that missile is the more range, speed and manoeverability it will have. A modern Fire-and-Forget missile can turn around and automatically seek it's target, while an older missile if it misses will generally continue until it runs out of fuel and self-destructs. The farther a missile's intendend range, the less manoeverable it will be due to the speed, fuel and size for electronics it needs. A close-range missile is way more compact and agile and can generally pull way more G's than a medium or long-range missile. A modern one like a Python-5 or R-74M Archer would be very, very hard to evade unless you had a lot of flares and that your plane is supermanoeverable.

Newer long-range missiles generally have a speed of about mach 3-4 and the new ramjet russian R-77M1 version will reach mach 5 with a range of 140km.
 
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