Elegant Solutions in Missiles

[magnemoe]

8 hours ago, monophonic said:

Not completely so - but the rolling motion must be slow. Just the addition of the rollerons transformed the hopeless AIM-9A to the world beater AIM-9B.

It was actually so good that when soviet engineers got their hands on one, they called it a veritable university course in missile design. The first versions of the K-13 (AA-2 Atoll) were such straight clones that they even had the same part numbers stamped on them! And if took a Sidewinder and an Atoll apart, you could build two working missiles from the parts without regard to which part came from which missile originally.

At least I have been informed thus. I've never actually done that myself, nor been within spitting distance of an actual missile for that matter.

Yes it looks like the sidewinder have just two axes of control in that it can rotate its two pairs of cancards. the rollerons remove rotation. 
One issue I see is if the rollerons are always active even on the plane they will wear out, I guess its some brake who is released then missile is launched. 

And its weird the Atoll looks so much as the Sidewinder, Should guess Soviet would copy the designs with their own parts. Perhaps copy the seeker head exactly but use their own parts for the rest. 

[sevenperforce]

Random but relevant: insects evolved to maintain straight, level flight at night by holding a constant heading with the light of the moon. That's why they swarm around lights and candles; they are trying to maintain a constant relative heading to the light source, but since the light source is nearby they end up spiraling toward it.  

[p1t1o]

20 hours ago, monophonic said:

Not completely so - but the rolling motion must be slow. Just the addition of the rollerons transformed the hopeless AIM-9A to the world beater AIM-9B.

It was actually so good that when soviet engineers got their hands on one, they called it a veritable university course in missile design. The first versions of the K-13 (AA-2 Atoll) were such straight clones that they even had the same part numbers stamped on them! And if took a Sidewinder and an Atoll apart, you could build two working missiles from the parts without regard to which part came from which missile originally.

At least I have been informed thus. I've never actually done that myself, nor been within spitting distance of an actual missile for that matter.

Ha! Interesting!

They definitely got a lot from early designs, though they eventually met, and according to some-surpassed, the west in some cases. The R-73 Archer was regarded by some as superior to its peers at the time - for example in high-off boresight launches using a wide-angle seeker and one of the first uses of thrust vectoring in an AA missile (coupled with a much longer range/higher impulse for its class), the Soviets were the first to have helmet-mounted sights, which until their adoption in the west would give them a distinct advantage in-close.

Leading in some post-fall-of-the-Soviet-Union cross-cultural (usually involving hardware from ex-soviet states) exercises to the phrase "I've been Schlemmed!", "Schlem" being russian for "helmet".