There are three ways I know of to avoid an incoming missile: * Outmaneuver it By keeping the missile at near the 3 or 9 o'clock line, the missile has to turn more than its capability to keep you in line. This might not work with missiles that are smart enough to chase where you are going, not where you are. I'll have to find that out with some experimentation (maybe the missile would lose aspect if it tried - see below) * Distract it Dump flares or chaff and hope the missile loses aspect on you * Get it to hit something else Flying behind a mountain, capital ship, or preferably an enemy craft so it takes the damage ..... In a game I'd like to make, I had an idea to provide a circular indicator around the HUD to guide the pilot towards the optimal flight path to avoid incoming missiles. I figure it could be around the 80 degree mark or so. I'll have to try it out and tweak it for optimum avoidance. And you would naturally have to be travelling fast enough to avoid them. If multiple missiles are coming in, you will have multiple circles. Fly towards where the circles intersect to avoid two at the same time, etc. etc. I wasn't sure about providing countermeasures like chaff and flare because they sometimes don't work, and I want the pilots to use their skill in maneuvering, not drop chaff and flares and then grit their teeth. A disadvantage to that is if the craft is on its way somewhere, if a missile gets fired it will have to re-maneuver to avoid the missile, which could throw it off course or send it wandering into range of more emplacements. The game I'd like to make is small scale, anyway, so I'm not sure how much that will affect anything. .... Question for the military types: I was on a military site that talked about the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. The article said it had a 4 degree angle of view and a track rate of 11 degrees per second. Does this mean the target must be within 4 degrees of the direction of the missile for it to maintain aspect, and the missile itself can turn at 11 degrees per second? The article also mentioned it could turn at 12G, and I'm not sure what that translates to. I just wanted to make sure I understood the terms right - then I can write some simple little experiments in dodging. Plus it will give me a good starting point for realism. Then I can tweak the numbers and see what the results are like. The article [edited by - Waverider on April 22, 2003 5:45:49 PM]

It depends on the version of the sidewinder missile you are looking at.. the newer ones have almost twice the tracking rate. The tracking rate is simply that, the rate at which the missile tracks a target.. the wider the range, the harder the missile is to shake. I believe the turning rate is measured in gravitational force (G''s). I may be wrong though..

I''m not certain, and can''t be bothered to work out the numbers to crunch at 2:30am, but I believe there''s a class of conditions with a dumb homing missile where the optimum strategy to avoid it is just to fly towards it at high speed with enough sideways velocity to miss it - giving a reasonable chance of finding its blind spot - unless it''s the missile they used at the end of the "Charlie''s Angels" movie - which somehow managed to see through its own rocket exhaust to the helicopter that launched it (while in heat-seeking mode)