I think I recall that in one of his writeups.
Though at the time I wasn't sure (and still am not sure) if he was referring to a new BVRAAM (what we are now calling PL-16) or a folding wing PL-15 variant.
Chinese air to air missiles
- Thread starter tphuang
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I think I recall that in one of his writeups.
Though at the time I wasn't sure (and still am not sure) if he was referring to a new BVRAAM (what we are now calling PL-16) or a folding wing PL-15 variant.
Or more so yet, is there rumors on the propulsion method used by PL-16, does it use conventional rocket boosters or a solid fuel ramjet like the Meteor?
Highly unlikely that it is a ramjet. There are tradeoffs associated with a ramjet design, mainly in terminal maneuverability for range.
man, for every claim like this I desperately wished we have a "skeptical raised eyebrow" reaction emoji in the forum, because that's definitely what I feel looking at the claimed numbers
Lyman's own claims don't really deserve to be propagated or distributed imo, even though this one itself was from over a month ago.
The idea of that kind of performance isn't unreasonable per se, but the specificity of it is silly.
Also in such range, imagine the apogee of the missile for loft glide or even some "ballistic" trajectory particularly if the apogee is in excess of 30 km. One concern is how they can provide control on the highest portion of the trajectory as fins become ineffective. Hit to kill ABM like say PAC-3 use reaction control with those fancy small thrusters.
Or maybe such control is not needed for air to air missile application, drawing from Russian testing on 400 km missile for S-300P (which eventually become 40N6) Apogee of 70 km was reached while range was 400 km. The missile's control surface is locked during the high altitude portion to prevent unwanted oscillations.
1000 km might probably reach Orbit, one then might have to think about Re-entry phase
Or maybe such control is not needed for air to air missile application, drawing from Russian testing on 400 km missile for S-300P (which eventually become 40N6) Apogee of 70 km was reached while range was 400 km. The missile's control surface is locked during the high altitude portion to prevent unwanted oscillations.
1000 km might probably reach Orbit, one then might have to think about Re-entry phase
Reaction thrusters/attitude thrusters is something that has been entertained for the PL-17 before and on the earliest closer up images of it nearly a decade ago there was some thought if there may be some holes on the missile frame indicative of attitude control.
Any rumors about the PL-17 having thrust vectoring?
(1)One may reasonably guess there's simply not much control. Very special mode against cooperative targets.
(2)For the sake of pedantry, orbit is not primarily a metric of altitude, it's a metric of speed first. Suborbital reentry won't kill a missile that can survive high mach numbers down low.