antagonist Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 (edited) Something peculiar happens to the AIM-7 when I fire it at a target crossing my nose at a constant speed and heading. What I assume should happen is the missile's seeker head calculating an intercept point along the target's course, then moving towards it in an almost straight line. What I see happening instead is the missile at first behaving just like this, and then the rocket motor burns out. Immediately afterwards, it attempts to acquire a different intercept vector due to the sudden and totally unanticipated loss of thrust, and in doing so, losing so much speed it falls out of the sky. Shouldn't the seeker be aware of how much burn time its rocket motor has and calculate the intercept vector accordingly so massive course changes don't become necessary? E: The target in question was beaming me at less than 13 nm, going less than 400 kts. The missile travelled around 15-18 nm before it encountered loss of control due to drag. This is a ballpark figure unless someone would be kind enough to tell me if and where Tacview may store this kind of information. Edited June 3, 2018 by antagonist
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