Actually, while this is definitive proof of something, it is not definitive proof of what you claim.

What your arrow behavior shows is not that the animation is generated based on the determination of the kill, but that the flight path of the arrow was changed when the higher trajectory was no longer required: i.e. that missile pathing is dynamic as opposed to static, and able to change in mid-flight. This in fact has NO bearing whatsoever on whether or not the missile's path of flight is being dictated by a determined kill or miss, or whether it is determining the kill or miss. So what I'm saying is that the missiles didn't change path because they were predetermined to be kills or misses, they did so because the conditions forcing their higher flight path changed. While this is weird, it has no relevance to whether collision detection is used in combat, or the animations stem from the battle calcs.

It remains as likely that your path-altered missiles are having collision tests run on them as it is that they are simply representing calculations.