Ares recently posted a description of a new Chinese short range air-to-air missile.

Seeing as how I actually spent some time working in rockets and missiles (SAMs mostly) I though I’d look at their thoughts and add a few of my own:

First, the missile clearly has thrust vectoring, but it does not have any forward fins. These seem to run counter to each other.

A missile lacking forward fins typically has better long range kinematics (the ASRAAM, for example actually has beyond visual range capabilities), but the thrust vectoring shows a bias toward shorter engagement distances.

It should be noted that the fore body strakes probably contribute a quite bit to aerodynamic maneuverability, particularly at high speeds (you will note that the ASRAMM below lacks them)

The rocket motor is almost certainly relatively low thrust at launch, to allow for the vectoring paddles to work with relatively small actuators (the AIM-9X does not do this, but it is reusing an old motor). Additionally, since the thrust vectoring has little benefit at higher speeds, where aerodynamics work better, it’s likely that they are jettisoned shortly thereafter in flight.

The report states that the missile is an Imaging Infra Red system, and my guess would be that uses a scanning array, rather than a staring array (go to the Wiki link, it explains the difference fully). While there are applications where a staring array is crucial, such as astronomical devices, for AAMs, the advantages are in dispute, staring arrays are much more difficult to manufacture.

One possibility is that this is the product of South African and Chinese cooperation though, it looks a lot like the Denel A-Darter (see below). Note that the A-Darter has a 6″ diameter (166mm) as compared to the 5 inches of the Sidewinder, which implies superior kinematics because of greater fuel volume).