How good is the MICA? not the IR.

mica vls

Overall I think that the MICA is more capable than the AMRAAM.

As seb92100 said, it has TVC and can be used as a BVR and WVR weapon, a big tactical advantage. The MICA has two optional seeker heads and it weighs less than the AMRAAM.
Instead of an aircraft having to carry 4 AIM-120s for BVR and 4 AIM-9Xs for WVR, the aircraft can carry 8 MICAs which can be used effewctivly in both roles.

The only two drawbacks with the MICA is the price is more than the AMRAAM and it has a slightly reduced range (28 miles) compared to the AMRAAM (32 miles).

All long range missile need an update for long range shot. Their seekers have quite a short range, something between 10 to 20 km for active radar seekers. Under this range, you can shoot a locked missile, that will be totally fire-and-forget.

Between this distance and something like 40-50 km, the target won’t have enough time to move out of the scan zone of the seeker. Thus a fire-and-forget shoot is possible. But the missile will probably lose time, speed and manouvrability looking for the target and could be more easily dodged, jammed or decoyed. A datalink will assure an optimized trajectory even at those short range and is thus desirable.

At longer distance, the target can escape the missile’seeker range only by changing direction, speed, altitude. A datalink is essential except against adversary without RWR that won’t change trajectory, because they are unaware of the attack taking place. As those target are defenseless, why take the risk of a long shot with an expensive weapon ?

Moreover, even if they have some scan capacity, autonomous seekers do not have the time to scan the whole sky to find their target. If they know precisely where the target is, they can quickly enter track mode and optimize their trajectory. Don’t forget that current missile have solid propellant motors that runs for a really short time. Most of the flight is done without thrust and the energy is limited for long range manouvers. On the contrary, the engines of jets always : in a cat and mouse game, a plane as an tremendous advantage against a missile … A constant burning motor like the one of the future METEOR is incredible boost of pK !!

I think that the AMRAAM is more advanced than the MICA. I speak about the current missile, not the old ones. USAF creates a new software for its missile every 2 years and a new hardware every four years. Much less versions for the MICA. BUT the USA do not give “its” missile to allies. In fact, I heard that they have the ability to datalink the missile from another plane, but that they did not gave this capability to anyone else. Because of those type of export restriction, I think the MICA is quite comparable on the export market. The exported AMRAAM performances are surely made by looking at the MICA performance in order to be just better.

The main drawback of the MICA is that it is more expensive , which is quite normal for a smaller production rate.

But the mICA has some more capabilities.

The plane can use the seeker of the IR version of the missile in flight, in its cockpit, thus adding a long range IR seeker to the plane for passive surveillance and target identification.

Possessing thrust vectoring at launch, the missile is multi-role, being capable of long range attack and short range manouvrability. In a long range fight, you have only AMRAAM equivalent under the wings, at short range, you are equipped only with ASRAAM. This is a real tactical advantage. Moreover it is an economical one as you have to support only one type of missile in your stock.

Mass 112 kg
Length 3.10 m
Diameter 0.16 m
Range from < 500 m to > 60 km
Missile guidance strap-down inertial reference unit
active RF monopulse doppler seeker
passive imaging IR seeker
reardata-link receiver
lock-on after launch or lock-on before launch
Offensive section RF proximity fuze
impact fuze
focused splinters
high explosive warhead
Aerodynamics long chord wings
and control tail control surfaces
thrust vector control (TVC)

i think the mica has the Mid course update…almost everyone i have talked to seem to suggest that the mica and aim-120 are more or less equal in performance….the isreiles claim that the amraam has the biggest NEZ out of all the missiles they compared….

Does MICA have a datalink similar to the AMRAAM datalink (for mid-course update)? Acc. to some explanation MCU on the MICA doesn’t exist.

dranio

i thought it had similar dimensions to the amraam.