How A/A missles work

[waste gate]

This cleared it up for me. What say you?

http://www.vfs27.com/files/Download/Missile%20Guidance.WAV (http://www.vfs27.com/files/Download/Missile%20Guidance.WAV)

[Dowly]

This is the reason I dont like modern flightsims. You have to press kazillions to get permission to take off, then another two kazillion buttons to take off.

WWII = Get behind, press trigger. Amen.

[Chock]

That's got to be the most convoluted description of mid course guidance I've ever heard, I'm guessing that guy probably writes computer manuals for a living:rotfl:

It is how a computer simulation's missiles work, but it's not how all missiles work of course. Heat seeking AIM9 Sidewinders for example, visually pick up the target from a gimballed seeker head, the image of which, is interpreted and then commands are issued to the fins on the missile to steer it and 'keep the picture centred', which is why older ones could be spoofed by climbing into the sun or diving on a heat source such as the glass on a greenhouse. It's also why they fly a snaking flight path as they make their corrections, which is why they got the name Sidewinder. More modern versions of heat seekers are fitted with complex discriminator circuitry to prevent this, and are sometimes smart enough to 'lead' the target a bit too.

Radar guided SAMs and missiles, such as the AIM7 Sparrow, effectively do the same thing by riding the reflected radar signal from the ground or aircraft-based guidance radar, with semi-active radar homing missiles having their own radar system on board for the terminal stages of the interception.

A lot of cruise missiles compare photographic terrain data with what they can currently 'see' in order to provide course corrections (this is why NASA did all that photo-mapping that you see on Google Earth and in photo-realistic terrain add-ons for flight sims), but problems with seasonal changes on the landscape make this a bit temperamental to say the least, which is why they are now using GPS data for that kind of thing instead, and also why most armies are currently working on systems which can jam GPS signals. Then you've got laser guidance, where the missile does a conical scan of the reflected laser energy and steers down that 'funnel'.

But like Dowly says, it's kind of hard to decoy or jam a bullet :yep:

:D Chock

[waste gate]

Its kind of the Rube Goldberg explaination. I took it as humor rather than reality.