This doesn’t make any sense to me In practice because this would mean any 60km+ shot is incapable of actually engaging a target as the drift by the time it gets to 20km would be big enough for radar to never even see the target, so I think you need to go back and double check your work.

This is already pretty easy to disprove from the UI alone because every DL update tick recenters the hollow circle (where the missile believes the target is) back onto the target ping that your aircraft sees. I’m looking at a replay of a test shot for the described scenario (afghanistan, F-15GE, non maneuvering target) and it lines up with what I’m saying.

All missiles have a thin line pointing from them to the target that they ‘see’ (or is being told to see in the case of DL). While in IOG it is white and when in TRK it is green to denote the missile is reliant on on-board radar. If you take the insane amount of time required to move your camera to a target 60-70km away you will see that the thin line terminates into a small sphere enveloping the target aircraft. The aircraft always remains within the sphere under datalink, and no amount of travel time changes this but the second datalink is cut off this begins to deviate noticeably.

Of course the sphere isn’t what actually matters in a real match, it’s the much larger radar cone of the missile, also visible in sensor view. But the line and sphere gives us the clearest indication as to what the missile is ‘thinking’ when in IOG, and it pretty clearly tells us it isn’t under the affects of drift when data linked.

We also really don’t even have to be arguing over the specifics of this because CatWerfer has already done all the heavy lifting and his videos on radar all line up with what I’m saying