Immediately after receiving the news that Ukraine can count on 16 JAS 39 C/D Gripen fighters with Meteor air-to-air missiles, there were talks about how exactly the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will shoot down russian military aircraft at distances of 200 km. They say that Gripen will be able to shoot down russian fighters that have just taken off from the Gvardeyskaya air base in the temporarily occupied Crimea while hovering over Kharkiv and attack targets over Kursk.
After all, 200 km is the figure that most often appears as the range of a Meteor missile. This parameter is used so often that it has become "canonical", but the manufacturer of this missile, MBDA, does not officially name its range, while the characteristics of the missile are currently presented in the following form:
Read more: Meteor Air-to-Air Missile with Up to 200 km Range Is One Step Closer to F-35 Integration
The only official source regarding the Meteor range is the Swedish company Saab, which participated in the creation of this missile and was also the first to integrate it into its Gripen among other fighters. The Swedes write that the Meteor range is "over 100 km". This is often explained by the fact that these are minimum guaranteed values as well as the intention to keep the real parameters secret.
Although in one of the official announcements, Saab announced another extremely important indicator of the missile - the range of the so-called "No Escape Zone" of over 60 km. This is a zone in which the destruction of an enemy target is guaranteed regardless of its maneuvers. It is this parameter that directly indicates that the maximum flight range of the Meteor is about 200 km. At lower values, that is, at lower rocket energy, the operating time of its engine, it would hardly be possible to achieve such an indicator of "No Escape Zone".
The reason for such cautious official statements about the range may be that the range of hitting an air target with an "air-to-air" missile is a complex dynamic indicator. In real life, a simplified diagram of the range of hitting a Meteor missile will look closer to this:
That is, the range of hitting an air target with an "air-to-air" missile depends on the speed, altitude, courses of both aircraft, as well as on how the target will maneuver after the missile is launched. All these indicators are dynamic, not constant. That is, the maximum range is achieved only in the case of optimal altitude, head-on courses and a non-maneuvering target.
At the same time, it should be understood that the Meteor missile has a longer range than the AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles available in the Ukrainian Air Force. After all, this missile has only recently lost its status as the longest-range air combat weapon for Western fighters, losing to the American AIM-174B, in fact - the SM-6 anti-aircraft missile, which was converted into an air-to-air missile and integrated into the F/A-18E/F.
Defense Express reported earlier that mysterious 200km AIM-260 JATM got 3x funding boost, while its serial production starts 2027.
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