>> It would seem that the easiest way to distinguish a flare would be to look if it's in a controlled flight? "This isn't one of your church picnic flare gun f

>> It would seem that the easiest way to distinguish a flare would be to look if it's in a controlled flight? "This isn't one of your church picnic flare gun firings". Smarter people than Homer have been working on flare technology for 40+ years. (2003) https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2003/11/30/2003december-smart-flares-being-designed-to-defeat-heatseeking-missiles https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2003/11/30/... >> Also, due to low L/D ratio in the high Mach region, if your missile is zig-zagging randomly, it won't stay fast for long. These are not airplanes with wings. These are missiles very high in the atmosphere flying complex flight paths more accurately describes as trajectories. The air is thin, the drag low, the energies extraordinarily high. A successful zig-zag maneuver could be as small as one degree left or right, up or down. And sacrificing speed to escape an interceptor is a valid tradeoff considering that, not being an airplane, the missile intends to slam into the ground/target in a minute or two no matter what its speed.