What is the range on the missiles on the AI MiG-31?

[Gunfreak]

I thought they were 200 nm things. But flying against an AI with orders set to fire missiles at maximum range, they don't fire on me, I fire of a AIM-54 at around 70nm and do a crank assuming it had fired a  missile at me, but it never fires one, then go defensive. 

 

 

[Temetre]

Maybe you know this already, but considerin you cite the max range:

In most cases, "max range" is completely misleading, and especially with soviet/russian missiles there seems to be an obsession to list the most aburd, ludicrous theoretical max range in a semi-fantasy scenario that only exists to make the missile hit something at max range. If its even a theoretically honest thing, considering countries might just lie about stats. France eg gave constantly different missile ranges about a certain anti-air missile; that wasnt even dishonesty, it was if anything more openly showing how theyre not gonna tell anyone whats realistic.

Like, an Aim-120C can probably go 200 miles if they bothered to give it enough battery life and capability. Maybe even hit something if its fired from 60 miles high at mach 2.2 in a loft trajectory, to hit a target thats stationary at 2 miles altitude, and which is pre-propgrammed into the Aim-120s memory. Because thats kinda what Russia does with missiles like R-37.

But they didnt, because it wouldnt be useful. Realistic effective max range of that missile is 30 miles against a fighter, and sometimes less than 10 miles for a reliable kill. Same way how the Phoenix could go way further than 200 miles, but instead its going extremely vertical so it got at least a kill chance at 50 miles.

 

 

You can add the same kind of doubt with the radar. Just think about how huge the F-14 had to be to even carry our current radar. The 80s F-14D supposedly got a radar capable of 480 on paper, but limited to 230 miles realistically. 

And like what, supposedly the soviets made a radar thats smaller but can see further? Old one up to 120 miles against fighters, new one supposedly 250 miles against a fighter sized targets, 400 miles against AWACS? With Soviet radars, which lagged behind the west? I dont know how good or bad the Mig-31 radar is, but I definitely know that these numbers are wrong.

Same way how the R-37s range supposedly just doubled and tripple in modern variants, from 120km to 300km, with little weight change. 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Temetre