Embarrassing. I can imagine the "Benny Hill" theme playing during this whole event. It sounds like a massive fuck-up by multiple parties, particularly whoever made that missile system and the drone control hardware. I wonder how many billions of dollars of taxpayer money was spent to acquire those cutting-edge weapons systems, only to be defeated by a busted dummy target.
Interesting how this event in the 1950's presages the failures of missiles-only fighters in Vietnam and the eventual return of guns as standard equipment.
The drone was flying in a continuous turn, so matching position, rate of turn, speed, and wing position simultaneously is probably an overconstrained problem.
That is a very dangerous maneuver. No pilot would consider contacting another aircraft in flight, especially not one of similar size/strength. It is just to risky. Looking at the dihedral of the drone's wing, it would take a massive force to tip it out of control. This was not a war and this was not a tiny drone aimed at a city. I doubt ramming or any other similar maneuver was even considered.
I agree that such a maneuver would be too risky, but note that the maneuver in question didn't involve any physical contact, it was purely an aerodynamic thing.
Most of actual firing seemed to happen over what is now the city of Santa Clarita. The "Bermite" mentioned in the wiki made munitions during WWII, and was still making rocket fuel when I was kid in the late 80's. Catching that on fire would have been bad news.
Airplanes tend to be stable with no control inputs. Planes flying long distances without a pilot or other control inputs are somewhat common, as these things go. Here's a famous example:
