In my opinion, 500-kilometer-range air-to-air missiles simply do not exist. Furthermore, even if such a missile were to be guided by off-board auxiliary radars, it would make far more sense to just deploy it on the ground. Besides, regarding this so-called 500-kilometer range, what does its mid-course velocity profile look like, and what is the aperture size of its terminal active radar homing seeker?"
How does Chinese flankers fare against our Su-30 MKI ?
- Thread starter Aurora
- Start date
500kms range missile also will have far longer MAR & NEZ. Anyways, with time we're seeing engagement range becoming longer and longer. Russians have pretty much swatted UkAF fighters from 200kms+ on a regular basis using R-37M.
I posit that as engagement envelopes continuously expand, tactical fighters will progressively divest themselves of the bulk of their kinetic payloads, shifting their primary role to providing remote, off-board guidance for surface-based or deep-echelon long-range air-to-air missiles.
Ultimately, airframe configurations may optimize around survival-centric architectures alone—retaining only localized self-defense mechanisms such as directed-energy laser countermeasures, hyper-maneuverable within-visual-range (WVR) engagement capabilities, kinematically superior disengagement velocities, and high-capacity decoy deployment,characterized by high-capacity extended-range fuel tanks and robust austere-runway takeoff capabilities, integrated alongside multi-band RF and electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor suites..