Bad News for U.S. Warplane Pilots: Russia’s New Dogfighting Missile Can’t Miss

War is Boring ^ | 12/04/2013 | David Axe

[MaxMax]

They can’t shoot down our planes if we can’t afford any. Jokes on you Russia! Haha

[TalonDJ]

The biggest problem is in the control loop. Make that faster and a missile can maneuver faster.

Not exactly. In the case of a missile the processing power, even of 10-15+ year old processors, can already crunch the control loop faster than planes flight. The speed of light is pretty snappy. The slow downs end up being the sensors and the maneuvering itself. Older sensors had to physically move to track the target then the missile had to maneuver to point at it. That is a pretty significant limitation. When you 'dodged' a missile back then you were not maneuvering faster than the control loop, you were just maneuvering faster than the sensor could tack and/or faster than the missile turn to keep you inside its sensor's field of view. If you beat either of those it lost lock. But those were not about the speed of the electronics. There were about mechanical tracking speed and aerodynamic maneuvering speed.

[TalonDJ]

AESA does eliminate some of the need to have a tracker head physically gimble inside the missile to track a target. The speed of gimble WAS one of the factors in how well you could track a target.

It still isn’t a silver bullet though. You still have to know what you are looking at to track it. And you have to not be already shot down by a fighter mounted laser.

[Bulwyf]

You may be right, but one thing you left out. They need to make more F-22s.

[Mr. Lucky]

I wish I could talk like that.

[RFEngineer]

yes to what you said. The control loop is not just the electronics.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks sukhoi-30mki.

The combination of T-50 and K-77M could match or even best America’s own F-22 stealth fighter, which is fast and hard to detect but lacks an advanced air-to-air missile. And the T-50 with its new munition is sure to vastly outclass the U.S. F-35, a smaller, less capable stealth fighter meant to comprise the bulk of the American warplane fleet in coming decades.