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Aside from the almost certainly low-balled "in excess of 100km" range figures for Meteor, I've generally only seen range estimates that give it in the ballpark of 1.5x the range of an AIM-120D - ie something like 250km-300km for example, assuming the usual ideal conditions. By my estimates, AMRAAM-ER has something like 2.5x the propellant mass of a regular AMRAAM; given ballistic / lofted trajectories, this has the potential to hurl it >2x further than an AIM-120D with the same lofting logic (but not the same lofting altitudes). At that point we're talking distances in the high 300km's, or even potentially exceeding 400km under fairly optimistic launch conditions.Those sorts of distances require the missile reaching most of the way to the Karman line though, so it wouldn't be very useful against fighters or anything with an unpredictable flight path at that distance, but still for the typical tanker and AWACS targets it could a handy tool. Probably better flown on an F-15EX for those purposes, but at more typical BVR distances you might nevertheless get some decent pK figures via the missile arriving with a bunch of potential and kinetic energy to expend for interception. I agree with bring_it_on though; an F-35's ideal future air-to-air payload would probably be a mix of JATMs and SACMs, with any AMRAAM-ERs (if it's integrated and procured) being in a more limited role for the F-35.
Aside from the almost certainly low-balled "in excess of 100km" range figures for Meteor, I've generally only seen range estimates that give it in the ballpark of 1.5x the range of an AIM-120D - ie something like 250km-300km for example, assuming the usual ideal conditions. By my estimates, AMRAAM-ER has something like 2.5x the propellant mass of a regular AMRAAM; given ballistic / lofted trajectories, this has the potential to hurl it >2x further than an AIM-120D with the same lofting logic (but not the same lofting altitudes). At that point we're talking distances in the high 300km's, or even potentially exceeding 400km under fairly optimistic launch conditions.
Those sorts of distances require the missile reaching most of the way to the Karman line though, so it wouldn't be very useful against fighters or anything with an unpredictable flight path at that distance, but still for the typical tanker and AWACS targets it could a handy tool. Probably better flown on an F-15EX for those purposes, but at more typical BVR distances you might nevertheless get some decent pK figures via the missile arriving with a bunch of potential and kinetic energy to expend for interception. I agree with bring_it_on though; an F-35's ideal future air-to-air payload would probably be a mix of JATMs and SACMs, with any AMRAAM-ERs (if it's integrated and procured) being in a more limited role for the F-35.
