An anti ballistic missile system and an air to air missile has different requirement
1- For an air to air missile, longer seeker lock on range is very beneficial because you can go defensive earlier. A SAM system on ground can’t move quickly from original position like an aircraft can
2- Stunner doesn’t just use MMW seeker alone, it also has an IIR seeker, and a re entry ballistic missile generate significant amount of heat signature that can be detected from long distance
3- David sling ( and pretty much all SAM) use massive ground based radar. Bigger radar aperture lead to more accurate radar. Smaller resolution cell mean missile have to scan less to find target.
Yes, but not too high. Because if you go too high, it not only affect your range but also your scan time, because your beamwidth is now smaller
Most cloud are below 24kft, thunder storm can reach 40-49kft but they aren’t that popular, you can’t expect there is a rain storm everytime you fight.
Besides, I’m not propolsing fully replace radar seeker with IIR seeker, but instead having a dual mode radar/IIR seeker to deal with countermeasure.
The longer the seeker range, the more advantage you have in a BVR duel, and 18 km range is still much better than MMW seeker range which is often something like 2-3 km
Swash plate is not suitable for stealth aircraft like F-22, F-35, su-57, J-20 ..etc.
Side apertures can be useful but the only fighter currently have it is the Su-57. But even on su-57, the side array is pretty small (half the size of F-16 radar)
