Kind of the antithesis there…

CAT I, II, and III are dependent on the load out. The 370 gallon drop tanks underwing put you automatically in CAT II. The pilot can only select I and III, so the pilot has to know CAT II limitations.

You also realize the big extension in range is due to ballistic flight where energy from thrust is traded for altitude and drag only impedes it gaining altitude. The orientation of the missile will be path of least resistance. During terminal dive the missile will use drag to steer itself to target and the nose of the missile will have a slight angle of attack off the boresight determined by the missile logic. If the missile was perfectly perpendicular to the target it would lose all benefit of its tubular shape. Missiles do not fly typically linear paths, they do generally fly a ballistic path with a variable roll rate. The missile logic’s job is path of least resistance to the terminal phase where it converts potential energy of an object in motion into kinetic energy for a change of said motion as necessary.

I think these basics escapes some of the people posting.

Total tonnage of aircraft is more revealing than quantity.

I like when Dr.Snufflebug appears out of nowhere with these perspective inspectives. Keep up the good work. 🙂

A rolling cylinder with angle of attack provides significant lift. The body itself provides lift. Even the old Red Eye manpads used rolling airframe for lift. Some modern missiles have nearly no wings for this very reason, yet still pull 40G.

That’s actually just you making stuff up. Hardly cut and dry. 24km in 30s is only Mach 2.7 average. Flying at typical intercept altitude (30,000-40,000ft) that is slow for a missile. The article itself says it can travel 33km in that time. Add your 6km, that’s ~39km. Is the time it disappeared from radar necessarily the exact moment it was hit?

I should have phrased it “at most Mach 4”, but the missile is decelerating once it’s fuel is exhausted. It decelerated relative to the conditions. Straight line flight results in rapid deceleration.

And you have a lot of nerve to say I made it up when YOU provided the source and my numbers came from it. Your numbers are consistent with my earlier post about thinking the F-16 is closing at about 400 knots.

Missile launch at 30km, impact when target is 18km away. So the gap closed 12km between the shot and impact. If each were closing at the same speed they each went 6km before impact and the missile went 24km in the same span of time. The fighters were subsonic. The missile was Mach 4 and traveled four times the distance.

Pretty cut & dry. The fighters were not flying supersonic.