Matra R550 Magic 1

Description

The Matra R550 Magic 1 missile (scale is approximate)

The Matra R.550 Magic 1 is a French IR homing air-to-air missile that was intended to replace the AIM-9s in French Army service. It was introduced in update "Starfighters".

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• A-5C
• ▄F-8E(FN)
• Jaguar A
• Mirage IIIC
• Mirage IIIE

General info

The R.550 Magic is the most capable missile currently at War Thunder, with boasting 30 G overload and resistance to G overload when launching, make it the most deadly missile at top tier when use correctly. It is to be noted that the Magic is a very light missile, with only two seconds of boost time. The missiles comes equipped with large and numerous control surfaces, ensuring high manoeuvrability throughout the flight time. The price of these big control surfaces is a high drag, with the weapon decelerating quickly after end of boost time, limiting the missile range.

The weapon enable time is 0.5 second, meaning the missile will accelerate straight for half a second before starting manoeuvres.

Effective damage

• R-60 - A soviet short range IR missile with excellent overload performance but poor booster capability

Usage in battles

The Magic is mounted on the Mirage series of aircraft, being extremely well integrated, and slavable to the aircraft's radar. Meaning that if the Mirage's Cyrano radar is locked on an enemy aircraft, enabling the missile seeker will immediately activate the missile seeker's gimbals, and the seeker will orientate itself in the direction of the locked target. Allowing a certain capability of "off-boresight" shooting of the missile. This fact is important in close range engagements and dogfight.

Overall, the Matra 550 Magic missile is to be used as a close encounter platform. Firing the weapon on an enemy at a distance of more than 2 km yields poor results, especially if the target is fleeing at high speed. Under 1.5 km mark, the hit is nearly assured. Note that the use of flares is an effective countermeasure against the Magic, but the missile onboard computers are pretty resistant to flares seductions. Concerning off-boresight shoots, sending away the weapon over 1-1.2 km is not advised, because the trajectory correction needed for an off-boresight shoot is higher that a standard shoot.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Great turning capability
• Can be slaved onto the radar
• Can launch in any G condition

Cons:

• Poor low speed turning capability, easy to dodge if launched close to target
• due to Ground Breaking update flares sensitivity are increased so it act like AIM-9J or R-60

History

'Examine the history of the creation and combat usage of the weapon in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too long, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the weapon and adding a block "/History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Weapon-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref></ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article with <references />.

Media

Images

• 

  R.550 Magic seen on Mirage IIIC

• 

  The Matra 550 Magic 1 missile. Note the size and number of control surfaces, and the lack of thrust vectoring in the missile's rocket motor nozzle.

Videos

Best guided missiles discusses the Matra R550 Magic 1 at 0:42 - War Thunder Official Channel

See also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:

• reference to the article about the variant of the weapon;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

Paste links to sources and external resources, such as:

• topic on the official game forum;
• other literature.