During the 58-year air battle in the Taiwan Strait, Chinese mainland obtained the remains of some Sidewinder missiles and a largely intact Sidewinder missile, and Soviet experts also obtained the actual Diamondback missile.
There were many things that surprised the Soviets, including the gyro rudder at the tail of the Sidewinder missile. The control system of the Sidewinder missile does not control the rollover of the missile at all. The missile's rolling is stable and automatically controlled by a gyroscope rudder at the tail.
The appearance of this gyro rudder is a partially exposed free-rotating metal wheel with teeth on the outside, and it can rotate at high speed when pushed by air currents. Once the rocket begins to rotate around the vertical axis, that is, it begins to roll, the rotating roller will try to stay in place, driving the rudder and forcing the rotating rocket back to its original position. It is worth noting that the behavior of the gyro rudder is a manifestation of purely mechanical effects, without any command from the rocket control system.
The soviet union to the sidewinder missile electronic components dismantling is also a hard work, because in order to make the missile work reliably under high overload and vibration conditions, the Americans filled the missile components with sealant, the Soviets had to buckle off the sealant little by little, expose the components, and then map one by one, in order to restore the missile control circuit.
