Corrected.
~~~
Lastly, and to put it simply - It's all about energy. How the missile's energy is managed determines how far the missile can fly and how long the missile can stay up in the air.
Last edited:
Chinese air to air missiles
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
~~~
Lastly, and to put it simply - It's all about energy. How the missile's energy is managed determines how far the missile can fly and how long the missile can stay up in the air.
You are not the only one in control of the missile’s flight parameters. The enemy target has an equal say.
PL-17 spotted, what do we know about it so far?
PL-17 spotted, what do we know about it so far?
There's no need to go to western media lol.
And we don't know anything about JATM, except it will be a new BVR AAM that can fit a modern AIM-120 form factor. PL-17 is much larger than AIM-120 as well as PL-15 for that matter, so they should not be directly compared.
We already know a fair bit about PL-17.
Basically it is a very long range BVR AAM, carried externally by aircraft (not able to be carried internally by 5th generation fighters due to size), and has a use case against force multipliers (tankers, AEW&C etc) but should also be capable against other aircraft like fighters and bombers.
Long range (thought to be 400km or more) is enabled by multi-stage rocket motor, trajectory, potent onboard sensors (which may or may not have an ImIr element in addition to its ARH which may or may not be AESA), and networking capabilities.
i think apart from size, the motor efficiency also plays a key role
I think PL-17 and PL-21 are two different thing, not a step up.
PL-17: Large and very long range for external carry on jet like the J-16 or J-10C
PL-21: A Meteor like ramjet-rocket powered missile for the internal bay of J-20 and J-31/35
PL-17 is even somewhat larger than HQ-16 (longer). HQ-16F is 150 km weapon from 0 altitude/0 speed, with vertical launch.
But if we launch, say, from M=1.5, H=10k, towards the target - it's as good as if we've burned through a full first stage of a heavy SAM.
Just that alone is enough to make us more or less equal to something like 40N6 (big S-400 missile), i.e. ~400km with more than enough endgame to engage a maneuverable target from above.
If AIM 260 is the same size as Amraam with such higher range, does that mean PL-15 is much less efficient and could be improved to have much more range due its bigger size?
Is China working on such an improved version of the PL-15?
Might also just be that the AIM-260 doesn't actually have it's stated range.
Anyways, it's not out yet, and if it gets produced and used in service, we likely won't get a precise number either, and even if they announced some number for the in-service AIM-260, we also won't know under what conditions that number was achieved under (might be different from how they calculated numbers before, maybe not).