Essah

Thanks guys, especially Bimbac. Thats good enough answer for me, didn't think about the proximity fuse. Makes a lot of sense.

So I've been wondering how exactly chaff works. as far as I understand: Chaff is a whole lot of metal strips released from a canister in the aircrafts countermeasure launchers. When released they reflect a huge amount of radar energy due to the large surface of the many small strips and therefore looks more like an airplane to a radar than the actual airplane does (Missile: the largest radar cross section must be the aircraft right?) This decoys active radar missiles as their internal radar locks on to the chaff instead of the airplane itself and tracks that until it disperses. what I don't understand is how this works with Semi autonomous radar missiles. They're guided by the radar energy reflected by the target when its painted by the host aircraft's radar. so in my logic when chaff is released a) your aircraft's radar would either lock on to the chaff until it disperses instead of the actual enemy aircraft and track the missile to that or b) your radar would keep tracking the actual airplane and the chaff would have no effect at all with the missile still homing into energy reflected from the airplane being painted, not the chaff. however none of these happens. your radar stays locked on to the aircraft but the missile (sometimes) tracks the chaff why is that? let me know if I need to clarify my question. Thanks in advance

applying the same knowledge that is used to evade air to air missiles in Flaming Cliffs 2 this is what you do: Beam it / F pole / hop in the Doppler notch. Has many names but it just means to put the radar or missile on the 3/9 line to maximize the distance and lead it has to pull on you thereby depleting its energy. You do not climb because in a zoom climb the missile will out perform you. That is unless you are on the edge of a SAM envelope where you have the option to escape the envelope before the missile reaches you. Instead of climbing you dive. Lower altitude has denser air and the missile will slow down much more rapidly than up high. Also the missile will loose speed quicker down low and the speed gained from the missile diving is nothing compared to the energy you gain in the dive that can ultimately be used to outperform it therefore diving is the thing to do. Just make sure your not diving further into the SAM envelope or into another SAM envelope. the 3/9 line has another purpose. If your distance to the tracking radar remains the same the shift Doppler radars will loose lock. I don't know if SAM radars are Shift Doppler, but it works for planes like MiG29, Su27 and F15 Last thing to do is the break. When the missile is dragged as low on energy as possible you do hard manoeuvres into the missile while pumping chaff/flares a slightly different tactic you can use is to put the missile at your 6'o clock. full speed and dive for the deck to attempt to outrun the missile, essentially escape the envelope as quick as possible. Hope this was useful to someone.