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Typhoon pushing the FCS to the MAX
page: 10
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I ran into this video sometime ago - Link it shows how the
typhoon is pushed really hard. Here's a GIF image of one of the maneuvers
i137.photobucket.com...
Mod Edit: Image Size – Please Review This Link.
Mod Edit: Image Hotlinking – Please Review This Link.
[edit on 14/1/2007 by Mirthful Me]
i137.photobucket.com...
Mod Edit: Image Size – Please Review This Link.
Mod Edit: Image Hotlinking – Please Review This Link.
[edit on 14/1/2007 by Mirthful Me]
Nice.
Nice plane, nice moves, and great vid.
Cheers for posting it.
Nice plane, nice moves, and great vid.
Cheers for posting it.
First off, 'FCS' means Fire Control System. FLCS refers to the flight controls.
Watching the clip reminds me of what an early Wildcat pilot once said of the IJN Zero crews he once flew against over Guadlcanal:
"Oh they're beautiful fliers, so crisp, so coordinated, seeing them fly is almost like watching a dance..."
It was not a compliment.
Given as the problem with a dance being that it's choreographed. You know where the next step is going based on the lead up commitment in the first.
And all that that Flubber maneuver comes out to being is a rolling skid with the velocity vector firmly coupled to the direction of flight and the nose-hose relatively conservative for applied alpha and thus change of direction relative to what he's gonna do with it beside bleed a little E.
Of course, if you want to get 'technical about it' the FCS _is_ what matters here because either the pilot's Topsight, the PIRATE or the ASRAAM has to be able to do something useful with all that 'looky over there, sorta!' nonsense (at relatively slow speeds or the weapon will weathercock even as the pilots head is locked in place by G loads) so as to keep the entire maneuver from being simply 'beautiful'.
Like a dance.
ACM is more like a drunken-man martial arts competition. A series of random lunges and sudden skid feints followed by an all or nothing knife hand to the gut in which nothing is clean and everything is about veiled intent vs. conserved energy in getting the weapon into parameters while keeping your airspeed high enough to live if you miss.
All the while, the /real/ killers are hawking the fight waiting for their idiot wingman to quit HOB nobbing the line of sight so they can put an end to the fight.
Real close in maneuver remains energy driven and is almost entirely defensive in nature to magnify the spatial window separation from an EXCM bloom while keeping the vector firmly pointed through the waterline and out the other side of the fight.
As such, whether 'carefree' or 'superman' driven, it is an exercise in error compensation.
And will remain so as long the manned airframe threashold performance _vs. missile_ remains so low and platform cost so incredibly high.
KPl.
Watching the clip reminds me of what an early Wildcat pilot once said of the IJN Zero crews he once flew against over Guadlcanal:
"Oh they're beautiful fliers, so crisp, so coordinated, seeing them fly is almost like watching a dance..."
It was not a compliment.
Given as the problem with a dance being that it's choreographed. You know where the next step is going based on the lead up commitment in the first.
And all that that Flubber maneuver comes out to being is a rolling skid with the velocity vector firmly coupled to the direction of flight and the nose-hose relatively conservative for applied alpha and thus change of direction relative to what he's gonna do with it beside bleed a little E.
Of course, if you want to get 'technical about it' the FCS _is_ what matters here because either the pilot's Topsight, the PIRATE or the ASRAAM has to be able to do something useful with all that 'looky over there, sorta!' nonsense (at relatively slow speeds or the weapon will weathercock even as the pilots head is locked in place by G loads) so as to keep the entire maneuver from being simply 'beautiful'.
Like a dance.
ACM is more like a drunken-man martial arts competition. A series of random lunges and sudden skid feints followed by an all or nothing knife hand to the gut in which nothing is clean and everything is about veiled intent vs. conserved energy in getting the weapon into parameters while keeping your airspeed high enough to live if you miss.
All the while, the /real/ killers are hawking the fight waiting for their idiot wingman to quit HOB nobbing the line of sight so they can put an end to the fight.
Real close in maneuver remains energy driven and is almost entirely defensive in nature to magnify the spatial window separation from an EXCM bloom while keeping the vector firmly pointed through the waterline and out the other side of the fight.
As such, whether 'carefree' or 'superman' driven, it is an exercise in error compensation.
And will remain so as long the manned airframe threashold performance _vs. missile_ remains so low and platform cost so incredibly high.
KPl.
Originally posted by ch1466
ACM is more like a drunken-man martial arts competition. A series of random lunges and sudden skid feints followed by an all or nothing knife hand to the gut in which nothing is clean and everything is about veiled intent vs. conserved energy in getting the weapon into parameters while keeping your airspeed high enough to live if you miss.
Interesting analogy..
If you think about it, a drunken-man martials arts bout isn't too different from certain dances which are of the swaying nature
(aren't crisp and rigid).
Anyways,
Opening up the 'how good is the cobra,kulbit etc.' issue again here:
(Hope everybody jumps in like always!! )
Close-in ACM may be becoming irrelevant with the introduction of stealth et all but if one were to look at ACM in isolation from that point of view, then it is obvious that close-in ACM will change.. has changed because of the relatively less popular(as compared to stealth) revolution of acute/hyper manuevrability in the last couple of decades.
Now whether doing a 'mongoose' or a 'Pugachev Cobra' or in live ACM is ridiculous or not is yet to seen.
I agree,in close-in ACM 'speed is the key' but IMO its a little more than that.
The key is NOT speed IMO; its 'judicious energy management'..
Speed can be cashed in for altitude and vice versa. If speed was 'everything'
then one would expect the 'faster' a/c to always hold the advantage irrespective of positioning.
Speed does allow you a certain buffer in terms of a failsafe. If you screw up and miss your solution window, then the greater speed will give you what?
A chance to bug out? Granted.. bugging out is good you're saving the a/c, yourself and going home with some info for the videowatchers to chew on.
But if you're going to re-engage then its interesting to see the possibilities.
Note that whatever I say here on is on pure speculation; I do have any prior knowledge of basic ACM so please correct me where ever deemd necessary:
If you've just survived a head-on close encounter and you're still engaging then doesn't 'speed' actually increase the time in which you can turn back 'into' the threat? Or are you going to cash in on some altitude/distance by excuting a comparatively wider turn(as opposed to a energy-bleeding sharp turn) and thus possibly give youreself a 'fresh-start' at the engagement inplay?
Now the guy who presumeably turns sharper back into the threat(by means of hyper-manueverability and/or sacrifice of momentum) will have a targetting solution(HMCS,off-boresight et all) faster right?
If he decides to take that solution and let go a high off-boresighter, then won't the other guy(keeping speed) have a mammoth distraction on his RWR? I assume his primary objective would immediately change to getting away from the missile rather than manuever into a desirable high speed-high altittude position for re-engagement. This gives the shooter enough time to regain momentum, get into a desirable position and then re-engage if the target is still flying.
What say?
Again I'm NOT saying speed is not important. Yes it is, but more than that, the management of your energy/momnetum is what will get you through IMO.
Another point:
The a/c that is undergoing drastic changes in acceleration(sudden deceleration incld) will obviously have lesser situational awareness esp if its a single pilot fighter. So here again the more you are in one state of motion, the better aware you are(regular blood flow to the brain). My question is, how much does this play into the scheme of things when you consider more situational awareness as a compromise to higher manueverability/accelerative flexibility. Does it finally boil down to how good the pilot is here?
The realm of ACM with acute manueverability has just be stepped into. This is new territory, and the red book hasn't been written. How many fully operational squadrons have been flying in this super manueverable realm uptill now?Call me 'shortsighted' but I can't think of many..
(Infact I can count em' on me fingers!)
But you can bet the guys who have been fully-Ops on these fighters(for sometime now) are developing new radical doctrines in close-in ACM.
Do these include clauses on the combat cousins of the kulbit, mongoose, cobra etc..?Maybe, maybe not..I'm putting my money on it though
Again on a separate note:
The UCAVs(if made to be highly manueverable someday) would be deadly if they were allowed to engage autonomously(free of remote ctrl)thus only limited by electronic/mechanical boundaries. If controlled though, their performance would be restricted to situtuational awareness of the controller(s) and his/their 'persistance of vision'/framerate.
So again here we enter a new realm: AI in ACM..
Skynet/Talon anyone?
P.S: I'm really hoping to get a lot of response on this!
Originally posted by Foxtrot97
Originally posted by ch1466
First off, 'FCS' means Fire Control System. FLCS refers to the flight controls.
First off, 'FCS' means Flight Control System Link
I never thought I'd say this, but ch is right. When you're talking military fighters FCS is the Fire Control System. Civilians use FCS for flight controls just to keep things simple, but fighters have the extra systems, so they use it for Fire Control.
You don't re-engage in a turning fight. Once you buy a merge, and if you don't blow through, you stay there until someone dies or you both run out
of weapons.
The conversion from BVR to WVR is a decision point. Each pilot knows the odds against them beating a particular type of threat WVR, and has decision points at which they either go to the merge, or abort and live to fight another day. Once you go through the range of the decision point, you are going to have a WVR fight. Considerations are countermeasures remaining, element numbers (ie do you have a free fighter), fuel state, weapons, intel on the adversary (including adversary aircrew WVR proficiency) and a host of other things that weigh into a "yeah, I can do this" decision.
No-one goes to WVR unless they think they can win. With the number of airframes that countries have these days, throwing them away in a fight you can't win would be idiotic. The only exception here would be if you had no choice (ie you're WVR only, and they're shooting BVR), in which case you rely on luck, buffoonery and a bit more luck. Or if you have a bazillion airframes that can soak up AMRAAMs while your true fighters come from the rear. But if it's national survival at stake, then I guess you do what you have to do.
Another tool that is used is the energy-manoeuvrability diagram. This diagram basically resembles modern art, with a whole stack of confusing lines. In a nutshell, it shows the performance of your aircraft at a given altitude, given fuel state and weapon loadout. It will show you that at a certain speed, the aircraft will turn at a certain rate, at a certain radius. It gives you an instantaneous turn rate (the fastest you can turn your nose at that speed in degrees a second). Turning at your instantaneous turn rate will bleed energy in level flight. The EM diagram also shows how quickly this energy will bleed. The second turn rate it shows is the sustained turn rate, again in degrees a second. This turn rate is, as the name suggests, sustainable, and you won't bleed energy. The line equates to where the energy loss is zero. You can also get from the diagram your turn radius. So, it is possible to tell, for your particular airframe, what the optimal altitude, airspeed and turn rate to use in a turning fight. Just to add to the confusion, it also gives you the amount of G all of this equates to.
I tried to link a picture, but it wouldn't allow hyperlinking. Try going to www.combatsim.com... to have a look at a computer game EM diagram. It has all of which I talked about above.
So you try to hit the merge at the best possible airspeed, turn hard at your instantaneous turn rate, bleed energy down to the best speed for the smallest radius you can fly (thus getting you around the circle quicker), maintain energy by turning at your sustained turn rate, eyeball the threat, and watch like a bastard to see if they are in a position to take a shot. If they are, you flare and turn in hard to Rmin their missile. If not, you see if you can cash in your remaining energy to get a shot away. This was relatively simple in the old days when most missiles acquisition zones were well forward of the three-nine line, but today with HOBS shooter going back to 100 degrees off the nose, generally someone is going to die before they are a quarter of the way around the circle, if they even get to that point. Oh, and both may die. That's life in WVR.
If that all sounds a tad confusing, that's because it is. It's not the glamourous, random, tally bally ho air combat of WWI. It is flown to a gameplan, to the numbers, and the smallest screw up means you die. You don't get too many second chances in WVR. Hence why it is much preferable to stay straight, level, fast and high, and kill the the bandits before you can see them. With a crank, snip and abort the only things you have to worry about.
Edit: picture link didn't work, so have added address in text body. Oh, and FLCS is the correct abbreviation for flight controls on military jets.
[edit on 14-1-2007 by Willard856]
The conversion from BVR to WVR is a decision point. Each pilot knows the odds against them beating a particular type of threat WVR, and has decision points at which they either go to the merge, or abort and live to fight another day. Once you go through the range of the decision point, you are going to have a WVR fight. Considerations are countermeasures remaining, element numbers (ie do you have a free fighter), fuel state, weapons, intel on the adversary (including adversary aircrew WVR proficiency) and a host of other things that weigh into a "yeah, I can do this" decision.
No-one goes to WVR unless they think they can win. With the number of airframes that countries have these days, throwing them away in a fight you can't win would be idiotic. The only exception here would be if you had no choice (ie you're WVR only, and they're shooting BVR), in which case you rely on luck, buffoonery and a bit more luck. Or if you have a bazillion airframes that can soak up AMRAAMs while your true fighters come from the rear. But if it's national survival at stake, then I guess you do what you have to do.
Another tool that is used is the energy-manoeuvrability diagram. This diagram basically resembles modern art, with a whole stack of confusing lines. In a nutshell, it shows the performance of your aircraft at a given altitude, given fuel state and weapon loadout. It will show you that at a certain speed, the aircraft will turn at a certain rate, at a certain radius. It gives you an instantaneous turn rate (the fastest you can turn your nose at that speed in degrees a second). Turning at your instantaneous turn rate will bleed energy in level flight. The EM diagram also shows how quickly this energy will bleed. The second turn rate it shows is the sustained turn rate, again in degrees a second. This turn rate is, as the name suggests, sustainable, and you won't bleed energy. The line equates to where the energy loss is zero. You can also get from the diagram your turn radius. So, it is possible to tell, for your particular airframe, what the optimal altitude, airspeed and turn rate to use in a turning fight. Just to add to the confusion, it also gives you the amount of G all of this equates to.
I tried to link a picture, but it wouldn't allow hyperlinking. Try going to www.combatsim.com... to have a look at a computer game EM diagram. It has all of which I talked about above.
So you try to hit the merge at the best possible airspeed, turn hard at your instantaneous turn rate, bleed energy down to the best speed for the smallest radius you can fly (thus getting you around the circle quicker), maintain energy by turning at your sustained turn rate, eyeball the threat, and watch like a bastard to see if they are in a position to take a shot. If they are, you flare and turn in hard to Rmin their missile. If not, you see if you can cash in your remaining energy to get a shot away. This was relatively simple in the old days when most missiles acquisition zones were well forward of the three-nine line, but today with HOBS shooter going back to 100 degrees off the nose, generally someone is going to die before they are a quarter of the way around the circle, if they even get to that point. Oh, and both may die. That's life in WVR.
If that all sounds a tad confusing, that's because it is. It's not the glamourous, random, tally bally ho air combat of WWI. It is flown to a gameplan, to the numbers, and the smallest screw up means you die. You don't get too many second chances in WVR. Hence why it is much preferable to stay straight, level, fast and high, and kill the the bandits before you can see them. With a crank, snip and abort the only things you have to worry about.
Edit: picture link didn't work, so have added address in text body. Oh, and FLCS is the correct abbreviation for flight controls on military jets.
[edit on 14-1-2007 by Willard856]
Daedalus,
>>
Interesting analogy..
If you think about it, a drunken-man martials arts bout isn't too different from certain dances which are of the swaying nature
(aren't crisp and rigid).
>>
It's the crispness which makes coordinated maneuvering predictable. Skids, lurches, sudden-snaps of movement, temporary increases in speed and frequent alterations of direction and height in short bunts and lunges are what complicates any 'unseen conversion' into a 4D nightmare. Similarly, offensive maneuver is seldom about more than 60`-70` changes in nose point because you don't want to give away speeds as intent _and it's not necessary_ (hasn't been since 1978) with ALASCA and now HOBS weapons.
>>
Anyways,
Opening up the 'how good is the cobra,kulbit etc.' issue again here:
(Hope everybody jumps in like always!! )
>>
Such tactics are perfectly acceptable if you come through the merge:
1. Advantaged.
By numbers and nose point.
2. Clean.
Without a massive fuel and 'multirole' stores commitment to another mission. An 'Israeli' 400-600 shot, MAWS cued, EXCM load also helps.
Yet modernday realworld A2A is a mission which is flown 70% (as wasted sorties) maneuvered 20% (as head'em off at the pass denying opportunistic exploitation by a threat which is 'merely probing' the package defenses in hopes of creating an opening by drawing you out or crashing the party by catching you napping) and engaged 10% (weapons come off the airframe). Now it can vary between DCA/OCA and tactical and strategic missions with ROE and all the rest. But it's generally not as important a mission as is often claimed for it and it is that operational assumption which leads to mistaken beliefs, not that the few can go it alone but that the many can be sent on other missions which compromise their A2A performance for the assumption of 'self escorting' which is where threats happen close-aboard with limited flown-profile advantagement to keep things properly fleeting.
In any case, when it DOES happen, it tends to be low numbered (jet speeds and missile fear) and engaged in by low hours competencies opponents who have neither the direct wartime nor indirect (which box am I checking today?) training experience to be competent.
Show them a flashy move and you may well carry the day. As has happened several times with AV coded F-16C.40s showing up the nominally 'much more agile' MiG-29s out of Germany with slow-over-the-top vertical maneuvers that the Fulcrum drivers _cannot match_ because they don't have the power or the FLCS 'carefreeness' to be successful, even as the dynamic AOA margins on the F-16 open up at certain combinations of airspeed and pitch rate to make them significantly more dangerous than a 27.5` hard limiter would suggest.
But that's 1v.1 or at most 'few' in which _exercise rules_ equates to 'ignoring the AMRAAM' to a forced merge WITHOUT the natural reactions of "Oh my god, my flight lead just blew up, time to let discretion rule the day!" that characterize most novice threat reactions to bolts from the blue slamming into their formations.
In recent airwars where only the few and the deadly even flay their egos enough to GET UP let alone to the merge, (see both ODS and OAF with only penny packets worth of threat air as QRA, not even an organized CAP) deconfliction and the use of smaller allied packages all contribute to the notion that the fight is won at or before the merge as AMRAAM crosses NEZ.
THAT is the way you keep the fight from lasting and _stacking_ THAT capability is how you keep the enemy jumping between bullets rather than concentrating on visual rules beating your airframe.
Superman has no meaning when the threat is firing BVR. The speed ranges are utterly incompatible for defeating both missiles and airframes.
>>
Close-in ACM may be becoming irrelevant with the introduction of stealth et all but if one were to look at ACM in isolation from that point of view, then it is obvious that close-in ACM will change.. has changed because of the relatively less popular(as compared to stealth) revolution of acute/hyper manuevrability in the last couple of decades.
>>
My problem with the hypermaneuverability is that it's tied to high value platforms that _do not need_ to risk themselves playing the WVR game.
Detached support is the norm for OCA ops today and OCA is the one place you can expect to find threat fighters (DCA is or should be Western-dominated by the ARH SAM and ADSAM directored fires...) and the driving condition of detached support (wingman separations of 5-15nm as a constant-flown offensive split geometry, section trailed separations of 20-40nm and flight sweep separations of 50-100nm) tactics is that he who illuminates is NOT he who shoots. And he who shoots, even if at relatively close ranges to the threat, DOES NOT commit to a merged plot scenario whereby he loses the ability of his offboard source to declutter and conflict as a function of presorted target lists. And to clean up threats which he misses as they follow through.
Change all of this around. Put a THEL type laser into the mix. And now it _no longer pays_ to be flying a 133 million dollar platform into a fight where you can be engaged _optically_ from 20-30nm away.
Now you want that A2A UCAV that looks perhaps like one of these-
www.designation-systems.net...
www.designation-systems.net...
www.dfrc.nasa.gov...
www.fas.org...
A UCAV which costs all of 5-10 million dollars, and is itself nearly optical-invisible for want of frontal surface area and low cruise thrust requirements to achieve viable supersonic flight at anything over 20nm.
Now, if you want to throw -that kind of platform- around the sky at crazy angles to the flight vector, you be my guest. It is more missile than plane anyway so there is no reason for it not to maneuver like it looks (albeit with likely entirely different control effectors).
>>
Now whether doing a 'mongoose' or a 'Pugachev Cobra' or in live ACM is ridiculous or not is yet to seen.
>>
I would be the first to admit that manned superman stuff _works_ if you can get the other guy to commit, close in, and fight in a fashion which conserves both airframe energy and pilot endurance. i.e. Slowing to subwarp speeds and waiting for the perfect hose-now-shoot opportunity with ONE threat. I like to think that the tactics methods are more refined and the nose point performance more sustained (X-31 EFM) than any transient performance stunting like the Russian stuff represents.
But it does work. If the other guy will play.
The problem being that once you're there, you can't leave until one of you is _dead_ and unless you /get there/ with numeric and geometry advantage, the chances of one or both of you (there is no reason to assume that 'there is only one superman' fighter per side) getting hosed by pyrhhic HOBS is _substantial_. More than the value of the airframe can sustain.
And if the Outside Shooter simply never commits inside 4-5nm, then whatever you do to wrap yourself around the other guy's velocity vector like two horny kids in a coat closet is just going to put you in hurtsville from the threat which hawks the fight.
NOW the question becomes 'how much do you want to become the bait goat for the sniper'? Superman crap looking a lot less appealing now eh?
>>
I agree,in close-in ACM 'speed is the key' but IMO its a little more than that.
The key is NOT speed IMO; its 'judicious energy management'..
>>
>>
Interesting analogy..
If you think about it, a drunken-man martials arts bout isn't too different from certain dances which are of the swaying nature
(aren't crisp and rigid).
>>
It's the crispness which makes coordinated maneuvering predictable. Skids, lurches, sudden-snaps of movement, temporary increases in speed and frequent alterations of direction and height in short bunts and lunges are what complicates any 'unseen conversion' into a 4D nightmare. Similarly, offensive maneuver is seldom about more than 60`-70` changes in nose point because you don't want to give away speeds as intent _and it's not necessary_ (hasn't been since 1978) with ALASCA and now HOBS weapons.
>>
Anyways,
Opening up the 'how good is the cobra,kulbit etc.' issue again here:
(Hope everybody jumps in like always!! )
>>
Such tactics are perfectly acceptable if you come through the merge:
1. Advantaged.
By numbers and nose point.
2. Clean.
Without a massive fuel and 'multirole' stores commitment to another mission. An 'Israeli' 400-600 shot, MAWS cued, EXCM load also helps.
Yet modernday realworld A2A is a mission which is flown 70% (as wasted sorties) maneuvered 20% (as head'em off at the pass denying opportunistic exploitation by a threat which is 'merely probing' the package defenses in hopes of creating an opening by drawing you out or crashing the party by catching you napping) and engaged 10% (weapons come off the airframe). Now it can vary between DCA/OCA and tactical and strategic missions with ROE and all the rest. But it's generally not as important a mission as is often claimed for it and it is that operational assumption which leads to mistaken beliefs, not that the few can go it alone but that the many can be sent on other missions which compromise their A2A performance for the assumption of 'self escorting' which is where threats happen close-aboard with limited flown-profile advantagement to keep things properly fleeting.
In any case, when it DOES happen, it tends to be low numbered (jet speeds and missile fear) and engaged in by low hours competencies opponents who have neither the direct wartime nor indirect (which box am I checking today?) training experience to be competent.
Show them a flashy move and you may well carry the day. As has happened several times with AV coded F-16C.40s showing up the nominally 'much more agile' MiG-29s out of Germany with slow-over-the-top vertical maneuvers that the Fulcrum drivers _cannot match_ because they don't have the power or the FLCS 'carefreeness' to be successful, even as the dynamic AOA margins on the F-16 open up at certain combinations of airspeed and pitch rate to make them significantly more dangerous than a 27.5` hard limiter would suggest.
But that's 1v.1 or at most 'few' in which _exercise rules_ equates to 'ignoring the AMRAAM' to a forced merge WITHOUT the natural reactions of "Oh my god, my flight lead just blew up, time to let discretion rule the day!" that characterize most novice threat reactions to bolts from the blue slamming into their formations.
In recent airwars where only the few and the deadly even flay their egos enough to GET UP let alone to the merge, (see both ODS and OAF with only penny packets worth of threat air as QRA, not even an organized CAP) deconfliction and the use of smaller allied packages all contribute to the notion that the fight is won at or before the merge as AMRAAM crosses NEZ.
THAT is the way you keep the fight from lasting and _stacking_ THAT capability is how you keep the enemy jumping between bullets rather than concentrating on visual rules beating your airframe.
Superman has no meaning when the threat is firing BVR. The speed ranges are utterly incompatible for defeating both missiles and airframes.
>>
Close-in ACM may be becoming irrelevant with the introduction of stealth et all but if one were to look at ACM in isolation from that point of view, then it is obvious that close-in ACM will change.. has changed because of the relatively less popular(as compared to stealth) revolution of acute/hyper manuevrability in the last couple of decades.
>>
My problem with the hypermaneuverability is that it's tied to high value platforms that _do not need_ to risk themselves playing the WVR game.
Detached support is the norm for OCA ops today and OCA is the one place you can expect to find threat fighters (DCA is or should be Western-dominated by the ARH SAM and ADSAM directored fires...) and the driving condition of detached support (wingman separations of 5-15nm as a constant-flown offensive split geometry, section trailed separations of 20-40nm and flight sweep separations of 50-100nm) tactics is that he who illuminates is NOT he who shoots. And he who shoots, even if at relatively close ranges to the threat, DOES NOT commit to a merged plot scenario whereby he loses the ability of his offboard source to declutter and conflict as a function of presorted target lists. And to clean up threats which he misses as they follow through.
Change all of this around. Put a THEL type laser into the mix. And now it _no longer pays_ to be flying a 133 million dollar platform into a fight where you can be engaged _optically_ from 20-30nm away.
Now you want that A2A UCAV that looks perhaps like one of these-
www.designation-systems.net...
www.designation-systems.net...
www.dfrc.nasa.gov...
www.fas.org...
A UCAV which costs all of 5-10 million dollars, and is itself nearly optical-invisible for want of frontal surface area and low cruise thrust requirements to achieve viable supersonic flight at anything over 20nm.
Now, if you want to throw -that kind of platform- around the sky at crazy angles to the flight vector, you be my guest. It is more missile than plane anyway so there is no reason for it not to maneuver like it looks (albeit with likely entirely different control effectors).
>>
Now whether doing a 'mongoose' or a 'Pugachev Cobra' or in live ACM is ridiculous or not is yet to seen.
>>
I would be the first to admit that manned superman stuff _works_ if you can get the other guy to commit, close in, and fight in a fashion which conserves both airframe energy and pilot endurance. i.e. Slowing to subwarp speeds and waiting for the perfect hose-now-shoot opportunity with ONE threat. I like to think that the tactics methods are more refined and the nose point performance more sustained (X-31 EFM) than any transient performance stunting like the Russian stuff represents.
But it does work. If the other guy will play.
The problem being that once you're there, you can't leave until one of you is _dead_ and unless you /get there/ with numeric and geometry advantage, the chances of one or both of you (there is no reason to assume that 'there is only one superman' fighter per side) getting hosed by pyrhhic HOBS is _substantial_. More than the value of the airframe can sustain.
And if the Outside Shooter simply never commits inside 4-5nm, then whatever you do to wrap yourself around the other guy's velocity vector like two horny kids in a coat closet is just going to put you in hurtsville from the threat which hawks the fight.
NOW the question becomes 'how much do you want to become the bait goat for the sniper'? Superman crap looking a lot less appealing now eh?
>>
I agree,in close-in ACM 'speed is the key' but IMO its a little more than that.
The key is NOT speed IMO; its 'judicious energy management'..
>>
Airplanes don't kill people, missiles do.
And smash is only useful vs. missile if it not only creates a new vector line away from the predicted lead but also _progression along it_ to separate you from the proximity globe as said weapon steams through the spot where you were while it's seeker tries to compensate for where you are. Where G is directly linked to airspeed and burner use is restricted trying to sustain G, you had better sprint-to-coast come in with the REQUIRED smash to beat the missile and the secondary edge (in your weapons system as much as airframe performance) to be tangential to the fight and 'already on your way out' when you take your shots.
If you pull the typical Hornet stunt of sub 350 knot at the merge, you will dominate the fight only so long as you point at all threats first and gain not only first shot but so shake up the bad guys as to take ZERO threat response fires.
Because without TADIRCM to CLIRCM-kill the inbound threat from the seeker aft to the controls you cannot generate enough vector separation from where you are to where the missile thinks you should be (aided by even kinematic decoys) to defeat the shot.
>>
Speed can be cashed in for altitude and vice versa. If speed was 'everything' then one would expect the 'faster' a/c to always hold the advantage irrespective of positioning.
>>
Unimportant when most fights happen based on the geometry you brung to the first shot and particularly _defensive_ break. He who puts weapons in the air from a position which cannot be answered, nose to nose, forces the other guy to honor the shot and in beating the weapon kill himself by planforming and EXCM blooming his airframe for a dozen followons. In this pinch and vertical displacement moves can help defeat initial acquisition based on expectation of wingman-here displacment but in reality the fight is closing so fast that you don't have time for a lot of "And now I will move the radar volume over here and lock him up...". So once the initial shots come off from a neutral-as-ACMT 'pure' setup, there is only look-break-look for the victims that don't have their own weapons setup at the same moment.
Offboard IFDL, HMDS, IRST and HOBS all drive this even further away from the expectation of a maneuvering fight because the gained SA simply means that EVERYONE is firing multiple rounds off presorted shoot-lists rather than being stuck with an unengaged or low SSPK threat which does for them.
Knowing that, as soon as you con with a missile trail everyone /not/ engaged will be hosing their own noses across to fire at the source (MAWS, visual or RWR confirmed) so it might as well be a full spread of torpedoes and out the other side means that hiding behind your helmet as nose-on smallest aspect and taking shots on an IFDL-and-a-Prayer passive basis of getting literally everyone to honor your first firing _rules the day_.
Everything past that is defensive and thus a mistake or a broken weapon which amounts to the same thing.
The only time altitude matters is when BOTH the weapons system AND the shooter platform bring such an incredible differential in static performance (F-22 at 45K, everyone else at 25...) that the threat is forced to acknowledge the disparity from the start. And even this is more about flyout on the shortrange weapons and difficulty in LORAL acquisition (we do not fire weapons pitbull) than a dynamic tactical decision made by the either side.
>>
Speed does allow you a certain buffer in terms of a failsafe. If you screw up and miss your solution window, then the greater speed will give you what?
>>
Speed gives you first pole. It makes a WVR round with a BVR seeker into a trans-merge lobshot that you 'draw the geometry on' by breaking away to draw the pursuit while the weapon TOFs out.
It is also the means by which you force the enemy to fight full throttle and thus (if you have supercruise or a tanker) puts a DCA threat into at least 'similar' fuel burn and EM factored part of the envelope where individual _slow speed_ agilities matter less and the threat aircrew have to be real masters-of-the-math rather than stick jockeys.
Finally, if you have stealth, speed remains the means to exit a fight from a tangential approach which never accepts the anchorpoint of a turning engagement. It is a ticket on the first-as-last stagecoach out of Dodge because once commited you will win the close in battle or die trying.
>>
A chance to bug out? Granted.. bugging out is good you're saving the a/c, yourself and going home with some info for the videowatchers to chew on.
>>
'Bugging out' is an offensive move when it allows you to atlatl _half_ your BVR spears from near-RNE distances while extending to reposition. If nothing else, it forces the threat to take you seriously in fixating their own shots-as-TWS-volume and wasting their gas in a futile chase-the-tooth-of-the-chainsaw pursuit geometry while totally oblivious to surrounding threats from secondary shooters. If they are truly dealing with an offensive presweep, it also is a guarantee that they will not have BVR to engage the followon strike package (X4 F-16 = X12-X16 AMRAAM of their own).
AMRAAM is a 60` boresight weapon with some serious energy and closein mode 'shock value' advantages over AIM-9M. It is at least competitive with AIM-9X _if the range value matches the aspect one_.
The question then becomes why bring such a weapon to the inner zone fight if committing to it with a high probability of being killed means all your residual SRM and 'leftover' MRM are also lost when your body parts start flying formation with your airframe. The key to leveraging the radar vs. visual merge is undoubtedly going to be IFDL vs. IRST. I would be _very_ surprised if the Euro canard clones don't own the sub-15nm zone with ASRAAM and MICA-IR plus PIRATE/OSF _if you stay nose on_. But the requirement to do so with two way digital tethers on the missiles is also diminished so that the shooter DOES NOT need to be the midcourse supplier of guidance.
And a 360lb AMRAAM-D will beat a 200-250lb ISRM every damn day for 'die tired' pursuit values.
>>
But if you're going to re-engage then its interesting to see the possibilities.
>>
If I am going to reengage it is going to be from an altitude and compass point line at least 10,000ft, 10nm and 40` separate from where I exited. Frankly, I expect most fights to be /over/ before I can reposition enough to make that kind of a reentrance possible. If they are not, I am going to have to think twice as hard about whether I want to go back in or not.
The difference is that if I have a shooter-illuminator pairing I can take datalink picture updates and shoot blind without necessarily bringing my own aperture into play. If the threat maneuvers on the active radar, he will take high energy BVR rounds to the face while trying to work his own geometry.
Past which, the supporting section can either wade into the noses-off survivors with their own shots or warp me back around (still at speed) 2-3 minutes later as the threat goes neutral bearing and tries to run. Whether I come back in or reverse roles to support them, the key is to know that the extension is rendered an offensive choice by NOT waiting until the decision is forced on you by pole-out 'swing and a miss!' on the first salvo.
But rather using an endemic (2-way to the weapon) ability to maintain a Contempt Of Engagement until you literally smash as much as pull apart the enemy formations with superior missile PK. Dragging and Coat Trail 'here I am!' without missiles in the air is for the birds. It is a defensive solution which takes one element entirely out of play and forces the other to be positioned predictably to save it.
And smash is only useful vs. missile if it not only creates a new vector line away from the predicted lead but also _progression along it_ to separate you from the proximity globe as said weapon steams through the spot where you were while it's seeker tries to compensate for where you are. Where G is directly linked to airspeed and burner use is restricted trying to sustain G, you had better sprint-to-coast come in with the REQUIRED smash to beat the missile and the secondary edge (in your weapons system as much as airframe performance) to be tangential to the fight and 'already on your way out' when you take your shots.
If you pull the typical Hornet stunt of sub 350 knot at the merge, you will dominate the fight only so long as you point at all threats first and gain not only first shot but so shake up the bad guys as to take ZERO threat response fires.
Because without TADIRCM to CLIRCM-kill the inbound threat from the seeker aft to the controls you cannot generate enough vector separation from where you are to where the missile thinks you should be (aided by even kinematic decoys) to defeat the shot.
>>
Speed can be cashed in for altitude and vice versa. If speed was 'everything' then one would expect the 'faster' a/c to always hold the advantage irrespective of positioning.
>>
Unimportant when most fights happen based on the geometry you brung to the first shot and particularly _defensive_ break. He who puts weapons in the air from a position which cannot be answered, nose to nose, forces the other guy to honor the shot and in beating the weapon kill himself by planforming and EXCM blooming his airframe for a dozen followons. In this pinch and vertical displacement moves can help defeat initial acquisition based on expectation of wingman-here displacment but in reality the fight is closing so fast that you don't have time for a lot of "And now I will move the radar volume over here and lock him up...". So once the initial shots come off from a neutral-as-ACMT 'pure' setup, there is only look-break-look for the victims that don't have their own weapons setup at the same moment.
Offboard IFDL, HMDS, IRST and HOBS all drive this even further away from the expectation of a maneuvering fight because the gained SA simply means that EVERYONE is firing multiple rounds off presorted shoot-lists rather than being stuck with an unengaged or low SSPK threat which does for them.
Knowing that, as soon as you con with a missile trail everyone /not/ engaged will be hosing their own noses across to fire at the source (MAWS, visual or RWR confirmed) so it might as well be a full spread of torpedoes and out the other side means that hiding behind your helmet as nose-on smallest aspect and taking shots on an IFDL-and-a-Prayer passive basis of getting literally everyone to honor your first firing _rules the day_.
Everything past that is defensive and thus a mistake or a broken weapon which amounts to the same thing.
The only time altitude matters is when BOTH the weapons system AND the shooter platform bring such an incredible differential in static performance (F-22 at 45K, everyone else at 25...) that the threat is forced to acknowledge the disparity from the start. And even this is more about flyout on the shortrange weapons and difficulty in LORAL acquisition (we do not fire weapons pitbull) than a dynamic tactical decision made by the either side.
>>
Speed does allow you a certain buffer in terms of a failsafe. If you screw up and miss your solution window, then the greater speed will give you what?
>>
Speed gives you first pole. It makes a WVR round with a BVR seeker into a trans-merge lobshot that you 'draw the geometry on' by breaking away to draw the pursuit while the weapon TOFs out.
It is also the means by which you force the enemy to fight full throttle and thus (if you have supercruise or a tanker) puts a DCA threat into at least 'similar' fuel burn and EM factored part of the envelope where individual _slow speed_ agilities matter less and the threat aircrew have to be real masters-of-the-math rather than stick jockeys.
Finally, if you have stealth, speed remains the means to exit a fight from a tangential approach which never accepts the anchorpoint of a turning engagement. It is a ticket on the first-as-last stagecoach out of Dodge because once commited you will win the close in battle or die trying.
>>
A chance to bug out? Granted.. bugging out is good you're saving the a/c, yourself and going home with some info for the videowatchers to chew on.
>>
'Bugging out' is an offensive move when it allows you to atlatl _half_ your BVR spears from near-RNE distances while extending to reposition. If nothing else, it forces the threat to take you seriously in fixating their own shots-as-TWS-volume and wasting their gas in a futile chase-the-tooth-of-the-chainsaw pursuit geometry while totally oblivious to surrounding threats from secondary shooters. If they are truly dealing with an offensive presweep, it also is a guarantee that they will not have BVR to engage the followon strike package (X4 F-16 = X12-X16 AMRAAM of their own).
AMRAAM is a 60` boresight weapon with some serious energy and closein mode 'shock value' advantages over AIM-9M. It is at least competitive with AIM-9X _if the range value matches the aspect one_.
The question then becomes why bring such a weapon to the inner zone fight if committing to it with a high probability of being killed means all your residual SRM and 'leftover' MRM are also lost when your body parts start flying formation with your airframe. The key to leveraging the radar vs. visual merge is undoubtedly going to be IFDL vs. IRST. I would be _very_ surprised if the Euro canard clones don't own the sub-15nm zone with ASRAAM and MICA-IR plus PIRATE/OSF _if you stay nose on_. But the requirement to do so with two way digital tethers on the missiles is also diminished so that the shooter DOES NOT need to be the midcourse supplier of guidance.
And a 360lb AMRAAM-D will beat a 200-250lb ISRM every damn day for 'die tired' pursuit values.
>>
But if you're going to re-engage then its interesting to see the possibilities.
>>
If I am going to reengage it is going to be from an altitude and compass point line at least 10,000ft, 10nm and 40` separate from where I exited. Frankly, I expect most fights to be /over/ before I can reposition enough to make that kind of a reentrance possible. If they are not, I am going to have to think twice as hard about whether I want to go back in or not.
The difference is that if I have a shooter-illuminator pairing I can take datalink picture updates and shoot blind without necessarily bringing my own aperture into play. If the threat maneuvers on the active radar, he will take high energy BVR rounds to the face while trying to work his own geometry.
Past which, the supporting section can either wade into the noses-off survivors with their own shots or warp me back around (still at speed) 2-3 minutes later as the threat goes neutral bearing and tries to run. Whether I come back in or reverse roles to support them, the key is to know that the extension is rendered an offensive choice by NOT waiting until the decision is forced on you by pole-out 'swing and a miss!' on the first salvo.
But rather using an endemic (2-way to the weapon) ability to maintain a Contempt Of Engagement until you literally smash as much as pull apart the enemy formations with superior missile PK. Dragging and Coat Trail 'here I am!' without missiles in the air is for the birds. It is a defensive solution which takes one element entirely out of play and forces the other to be positioned predictably to save it.
>>
Note that whatever I say here on is on pure speculation; I do have any prior knowledge of basic ACM so please correct me where ever deemd necessary:
If you've just survived a head-on close encounter and you're still engaging then doesn't 'speed' actually increase the time in which you can turn back 'into' the threat? Or are you going to cash in on some altitude/distance by excuting a comparatively wider turn(as opposed to a energy-bleeding sharp turn) and thus possibly give youreself a 'fresh-start' at the engagement inplay?
>>
If I just went 3/9 with some unseen threat, I will first be kicking myself soundly in the butt for not looking at my SAD and thus failing to see what both my onboard and handed sensor picture has shown to be a bandit 'right there', all the time.
Of course I will also be remembering to profusely Thank God and assorted Saints for not letting junior see me until he was too compressed to make his own geometry work to put one right in my lips.
If he doesn't see me, I'm going to do _nothing_ to increase the likelihood that he /will/ by deflecting my 60X40ft aluminum overcast to planform his cockpit. If nothing else, this is a sure and certain way to fall for the in-trail drag by which you roll out into a self-built sandwich with a Sniper grade honcho at your back saddling up for free.
If you are free, you let your wingman swing across and you set up to _support him_. There is no egotism in proper ACM doctrine. The kill belongs to the section, even when one of you you screws up, bad.
>>
Now the guy who presumeably turns sharper back into the threat(by means of hyper-manueverability and/or sacrifice of momentum) will have a targetting solution(HMCS,off-boresight et all) faster right?
>>
In a HOBS world, the likelihood that you will live to go 'elbow to elbow' at a fighting 3/9 1-2 circle initiation point is very small. The rounds can come off extremely late and _make the play_ which gets the face kill. If he immediately slams on the brakes to go into a bat turn with poststall crap giving him the freebie setup by turning back in is ALSO a bad idea.
If the bad guy is flying a Gen-4/5 class -fully fused sensor weapons system- it is equally unlikely that you will live to break contact because he will have DAS or wide bore (OSF, PIRATE) IRST and IFDL cueable pointing of his own and you will not be able to prevent him holding or reestablishing target track. If you are flying against a Gen-3 threat where the only thing going for him is knots limited super maneuver once acquired, your first goal is to defeat the head mounted gimbal. By changing lanes and burying yourself below his sill if not his spine. And then getting the hell out of there.
A heavy fighter like the F-15 or 22 has 8 shots of which at least 6 should optimally be BVR centric (used before accepting the merge on your terms).
The remaining 2 SRM, even if AIM-9X, are boot knives to be used as a coup de grace mopup hammer when you are pressed to (say) break a defensive CAP before the strike train blows through. Or attacking a mudmover force with limited A2A options of their own (Jaguar, MiG-27, AMX, MiG-21 etc.), you find it wiser to conserve your best shots (though this can be dangerous too as seen with Sparrow armed F-15E shotgun escorts in the ODS first night lolo raids).
As a function of deliberately choosing to switch from spear chucker to knife fighter, even assuming you expend 2/3rds (full four on four TWS engagement) your MRM shots in the first rush to the merge, WHY would you /risk/ the 'useful' remaining two looking to turn back in and go tooth and claw with a threat which you KNEW was there because you had your picture, your wingmans picture and the E-3 ALL telling you who had survived the first gambit (max-pole) and second clean-up (best pole) BVR segments of a 2v.Many fight large enough to soak all those BVR rounds without decisive threat breakup?
If you must go visual, bring your wingman in a bit and let HIM shoot (on a tether not pitbull) the threats off you. On a seconds to seconds basis of now-you-die missile TOF out, it's not a function of absent aggressiveness as a 'key fighter pilot characteristic' it is about FIRST TO NOSEPOINT. And that is almost always going to be the unengaged freefighter because the occupied threat may well end up doing half the work for him (saddle up).
The combination of X worrying about what is still out there as he commits back around and the difference (60-80` vs. 180-210`) in total turn with a HOBS weapons system (both airframes come round the circle at Max G, only to face headon shot parameters at reduced energy, weird aspect and low residual G-durance) makes it absolutely necessary to avoid the close in fight if there is ANY chance of conserving energy while maintaining a neutral bearing running out the other side.
It helps your wingman get a clean shot. It helps put you further towards the edge of the envelope and it SAVES YOUR USEFUL MISSILES (BVR all the way) for the threats you haven't yet encountered.
Don't turn on a merged plot. Not ever.
>>
If he decides to take that solution and let go a high off-boresighter, then won't the other guy(keeping speed) have a mammoth distraction on his RWR? I assume his primary objective would immediately change to getting away from the missile rather than manuever into a desirable high speed-high altittude position for re-engagement. This gives the shooter enough time to regain momentum, get into a desirable position and then re-engage if the target is still flying.
What say?
>>
The RWR PPI display is the last place junior wants to be in-cockpit looking in a visual fight. Whether HUD or HMD, all your data should be out-of-cockpit because that's where you want your eyes to be focussed and your head ready-positioned to hold sudden G-Snaps. I frankly don't know how they display inbound threat warnings via the MAWS/MLDS systems on todays fighters but given these systems can see the launch event at up to 10 or more miles away (i.e. much greater spatial separation on the display) and the amount of other emitter source clutter already occupying the display, I would not want inbound threats to be cued that way even if I had had the extra seconds to change my focal point. At night, NVG will give you the missile trail as well as a MAWS will in daylight if you see the launch so again, it's better to be heads out and looking. In weather, is the last place to be running games against missiles, especially as most MAWS are now IR/UV optical.
IMO, you shoot as you come through. There is no extended maneuver phase, what you miss you leave 'at a soft angle' as much as behind for the next section to clean up. Any lessening of aspect occurs purely to offset from any threat elements in trail and/or to defeat a threat shot. Otherwise, you want to keep your tail-as-nose separation as clean and I'm-a-dot tiny as possible.
If you want a robust visual range dogfight system then DUMP 90% of the'V2 Factor' (value and vulnerability) in the platform as the radar weapons system and the manned-rating limitations and go for a simple SRM/Gun/Kamikaze leveled threat which can swarm all bearings with low enough drag and small enough signature to prevent runaway threats and enough sustained EM capability to make superman effectively a sustained capability.
There is nothing like being able to acceleratively stall the airframe into a high alpha condition for a geometry change or missile snapshot and then bring the nose back down and flyout /before/ you submarine below 320 knots. If you keep your speed high, you can use Superman stuff. If you have to go slow then winning comes down to not only getting the first shot but the ONLY shot in the fight and that is just not a winnable expectation.
Note that whatever I say here on is on pure speculation; I do have any prior knowledge of basic ACM so please correct me where ever deemd necessary:
If you've just survived a head-on close encounter and you're still engaging then doesn't 'speed' actually increase the time in which you can turn back 'into' the threat? Or are you going to cash in on some altitude/distance by excuting a comparatively wider turn(as opposed to a energy-bleeding sharp turn) and thus possibly give youreself a 'fresh-start' at the engagement inplay?
>>
If I just went 3/9 with some unseen threat, I will first be kicking myself soundly in the butt for not looking at my SAD and thus failing to see what both my onboard and handed sensor picture has shown to be a bandit 'right there', all the time.
Of course I will also be remembering to profusely Thank God and assorted Saints for not letting junior see me until he was too compressed to make his own geometry work to put one right in my lips.
If he doesn't see me, I'm going to do _nothing_ to increase the likelihood that he /will/ by deflecting my 60X40ft aluminum overcast to planform his cockpit. If nothing else, this is a sure and certain way to fall for the in-trail drag by which you roll out into a self-built sandwich with a Sniper grade honcho at your back saddling up for free.
If you are free, you let your wingman swing across and you set up to _support him_. There is no egotism in proper ACM doctrine. The kill belongs to the section, even when one of you you screws up, bad.
>>
Now the guy who presumeably turns sharper back into the threat(by means of hyper-manueverability and/or sacrifice of momentum) will have a targetting solution(HMCS,off-boresight et all) faster right?
>>
In a HOBS world, the likelihood that you will live to go 'elbow to elbow' at a fighting 3/9 1-2 circle initiation point is very small. The rounds can come off extremely late and _make the play_ which gets the face kill. If he immediately slams on the brakes to go into a bat turn with poststall crap giving him the freebie setup by turning back in is ALSO a bad idea.
If the bad guy is flying a Gen-4/5 class -fully fused sensor weapons system- it is equally unlikely that you will live to break contact because he will have DAS or wide bore (OSF, PIRATE) IRST and IFDL cueable pointing of his own and you will not be able to prevent him holding or reestablishing target track. If you are flying against a Gen-3 threat where the only thing going for him is knots limited super maneuver once acquired, your first goal is to defeat the head mounted gimbal. By changing lanes and burying yourself below his sill if not his spine. And then getting the hell out of there.
A heavy fighter like the F-15 or 22 has 8 shots of which at least 6 should optimally be BVR centric (used before accepting the merge on your terms).
The remaining 2 SRM, even if AIM-9X, are boot knives to be used as a coup de grace mopup hammer when you are pressed to (say) break a defensive CAP before the strike train blows through. Or attacking a mudmover force with limited A2A options of their own (Jaguar, MiG-27, AMX, MiG-21 etc.), you find it wiser to conserve your best shots (though this can be dangerous too as seen with Sparrow armed F-15E shotgun escorts in the ODS first night lolo raids).
As a function of deliberately choosing to switch from spear chucker to knife fighter, even assuming you expend 2/3rds (full four on four TWS engagement) your MRM shots in the first rush to the merge, WHY would you /risk/ the 'useful' remaining two looking to turn back in and go tooth and claw with a threat which you KNEW was there because you had your picture, your wingmans picture and the E-3 ALL telling you who had survived the first gambit (max-pole) and second clean-up (best pole) BVR segments of a 2v.Many fight large enough to soak all those BVR rounds without decisive threat breakup?
If you must go visual, bring your wingman in a bit and let HIM shoot (on a tether not pitbull) the threats off you. On a seconds to seconds basis of now-you-die missile TOF out, it's not a function of absent aggressiveness as a 'key fighter pilot characteristic' it is about FIRST TO NOSEPOINT. And that is almost always going to be the unengaged freefighter because the occupied threat may well end up doing half the work for him (saddle up).
The combination of X worrying about what is still out there as he commits back around and the difference (60-80` vs. 180-210`) in total turn with a HOBS weapons system (both airframes come round the circle at Max G, only to face headon shot parameters at reduced energy, weird aspect and low residual G-durance) makes it absolutely necessary to avoid the close in fight if there is ANY chance of conserving energy while maintaining a neutral bearing running out the other side.
It helps your wingman get a clean shot. It helps put you further towards the edge of the envelope and it SAVES YOUR USEFUL MISSILES (BVR all the way) for the threats you haven't yet encountered.
Don't turn on a merged plot. Not ever.
>>
If he decides to take that solution and let go a high off-boresighter, then won't the other guy(keeping speed) have a mammoth distraction on his RWR? I assume his primary objective would immediately change to getting away from the missile rather than manuever into a desirable high speed-high altittude position for re-engagement. This gives the shooter enough time to regain momentum, get into a desirable position and then re-engage if the target is still flying.
What say?
>>
The RWR PPI display is the last place junior wants to be in-cockpit looking in a visual fight. Whether HUD or HMD, all your data should be out-of-cockpit because that's where you want your eyes to be focussed and your head ready-positioned to hold sudden G-Snaps. I frankly don't know how they display inbound threat warnings via the MAWS/MLDS systems on todays fighters but given these systems can see the launch event at up to 10 or more miles away (i.e. much greater spatial separation on the display) and the amount of other emitter source clutter already occupying the display, I would not want inbound threats to be cued that way even if I had had the extra seconds to change my focal point. At night, NVG will give you the missile trail as well as a MAWS will in daylight if you see the launch so again, it's better to be heads out and looking. In weather, is the last place to be running games against missiles, especially as most MAWS are now IR/UV optical.
IMO, you shoot as you come through. There is no extended maneuver phase, what you miss you leave 'at a soft angle' as much as behind for the next section to clean up. Any lessening of aspect occurs purely to offset from any threat elements in trail and/or to defeat a threat shot. Otherwise, you want to keep your tail-as-nose separation as clean and I'm-a-dot tiny as possible.
If you want a robust visual range dogfight system then DUMP 90% of the'V2 Factor' (value and vulnerability) in the platform as the radar weapons system and the manned-rating limitations and go for a simple SRM/Gun/Kamikaze leveled threat which can swarm all bearings with low enough drag and small enough signature to prevent runaway threats and enough sustained EM capability to make superman effectively a sustained capability.
There is nothing like being able to acceleratively stall the airframe into a high alpha condition for a geometry change or missile snapshot and then bring the nose back down and flyout /before/ you submarine below 320 knots. If you keep your speed high, you can use Superman stuff. If you have to go slow then winning comes down to not only getting the first shot but the ONLY shot in the fight and that is just not a winnable expectation.
Indeed, unless the other guy is totally defensive (nose off, speed low, airframe damaged for a choice) the gap between visual merge and last BVR radar
one as an energy attrition factor is just too long to exploit as an entry pass to a neutral odds turning fight. Modern airframes accelerate too
quickly for that.
>>
Again I'm NOT saying speed is not important. Yes it is, but more than that, the management of your energy/momnetum is what will get you through IMO.
Another point:
The a/c that is undergoing drastic changes in acceleration(sudden deceleration incld) will obviously have lesser situational awareness esp if its a single pilot fighter. So here again the more you are in one state of motion, the better aware you are(regular blood flow to the brain). My question is, how much does this play into the scheme of things when you consider more situational awareness as a compromise to higher manueverability/accelerative flexibility. Does it finally boil down to how good the pilot is here?
>>
No. What is important about speed is that it linearizes the number of threats to those directly along the own-vector which can achieve a face intercept. Even with newer, high energy, motors in the latest ISRMs there is a limited number of angle + spatial offset points at which a threat can viably shoot you, at speed. HOBS helps but is of equal advantagement in that, if both sides have it, the guy who holds to a tangential not direct intercept with the other guys HCA is going to use his HMDS to put a round in the air before he goes quartering and his visual silouhette becomes an easy acquisition for the other guy.
Once you have (made the mistake) of going visual with radar rounds or a full-bay Wingman still available, getting the heat-shot off the airframe and into the guys decision cycle at decent but not extreme aspect is what it's all about because then you can start to put your own exit or reposition moves on the table. Whereas running right down his throat may slightly delay the nose-on acquisition cycle. But it will also buy you a dead man's vengeance with little or nothing to be done about it but slam the EXCM panic button and pray his weapon fuzing is off.
In this, a pilot who is trained to make use of offset conversions and a lot of 'he is here, I will turnin to set the shot when he comes out from under my airframe over there' can win a lot of fights compared to the guy used to running a fixed GCI vector or whatever. But only to the extent that said guy doesn't FOLLOW his GCI to keep cranking back into your nose and forcing the nose on 'little plane sees big plane shots fired' outcome.
The simple fact of the matter (for U.S.) is that we have to come a long ways to the fight with a platform that is optimized to score few vs. many kills via a heavy radar weapons system. The combination of fuel useage restrictions on the bad end of long mission radius and the wing area to lift both said gas and radar missiles tends to size the platform to the extent that a maneuvering fight 'turns you' into one giant bullseye-in-sky for little gain in absolute perfomance margin to win (wingarea at altitude is offset by drag and signature-as-throttle requirements to overcome the inertia effect on total platform mass).
A latemodel F-16 with IPE or EFE will, without too much effort, beat an F-14/15/Su-27 in 90% of close in, subsonic, fights even fairly high up, simply because it is cheap enough to saturate in numbers. And small enough to get away with making large scale changes in aspect and fight plane with simple missiles.
It's still too costly to just throw away (because the large fighters will take 65-75% of them out in the BVR phase), even assuming you could find skilled pilots to volunteer.
But it is the starting conditions of the visual fight that the smaller airframe creates which dictates the math by which most outcomes will be modeled. Not the pilot skill which all that performance 'inspires to greatness'.
Now take this to the level of an F-22 which may well have upwards of FIVE MILES of (WVR) starting slant as supercruise restricted height advantagement as well as the detection threshold VLO issue on it's side. The F-16 cannot play up to it's level. Why should the Raptor degrade itself coming down? Indeed, why stay /in the fight/ long enough to pass overhead?
>>
The realm of ACM with acute manueverability has just be stepped into. This is new territory, and the red book hasn't been written. How many fully operational squadrons have been flying in this super manueverable realm uptill now?Call me 'shortsighted' but I can't think of many..
>>
The key is to remember that when -both sides have it- it will largely cancel itself out until and unless you create a dedicated sweep-mission platform which is specifically designed to exploit that capability alone.
During ODS that might have been a useful capability to have as I know an F-15 pilot, with full Musket and E-3 capability, who came within an inch as a mile of blowing away an RAF Tornado determinedly flying in his own little world, against the stream of traffic.
Today, the question becomes whether shifting towards dedicated A2A UCAV is a useful thing to attempt to pioneer as a cheap and easy way for otherwise non-competing nations to stack the deck with throwaway airpower back towards Vietnam if not Korean era days of huge few-on-multi fights with F-104 levels of straightline performance and X-31 equivalent PSTM all in one airframe.
For the U.S. the need for a fully penetrating TARCAP is receding as not the S2A defenses potentially so lethal that the standoff capabilities of glide and cruise weapons to compensate for them make a terminal approach capability more about making our 'Allies' (just now becoming predominantly /LGB/ shooters) continue to be viable players than anything we need to do on our own.
To compensate for low purchased numbers of Raptor and/or a DEWS threat, the A2A UCAV looks a little better but the S2A problem is still there and why risk the LO technologies necessary for penetration to a very high risk terminal engagement mode apt to drop free-techbase gifts into our enemies hands when they copy it _not_ the Raptor?
Similarly, as long as we need to come 500-800nm from a given secure basing mode, we will always pay a sized-as-weight penalty. Even as we will also likely pay one in transit time (the strikers will be subsonic, the A2A -may- not be but won't be able to stick around lolligagging for the slowest marchers who WILL dictate the pace and positioning of the tankers as well...). Under these conditions of 1.5 raids per day it makes more sense to maximize numbers of A2G munitions every time you come over the fence than to 'sweep the skies' repeatedly because you can't definitively suppress and/or destroy the IADS threat the first time. With bombs.
Such a solution again being about 'better bullet theory' whereby you up the range of glide weapons to increase WEZ standoff. Or make cruise systems (MALD or ITALD with a 250lb warhead) cheap enough to be expended in numbers. It is not about making a rarely used support mission a dominant design driver in an of itself.
>>
Again I'm NOT saying speed is not important. Yes it is, but more than that, the management of your energy/momnetum is what will get you through IMO.
Another point:
The a/c that is undergoing drastic changes in acceleration(sudden deceleration incld) will obviously have lesser situational awareness esp if its a single pilot fighter. So here again the more you are in one state of motion, the better aware you are(regular blood flow to the brain). My question is, how much does this play into the scheme of things when you consider more situational awareness as a compromise to higher manueverability/accelerative flexibility. Does it finally boil down to how good the pilot is here?
>>
No. What is important about speed is that it linearizes the number of threats to those directly along the own-vector which can achieve a face intercept. Even with newer, high energy, motors in the latest ISRMs there is a limited number of angle + spatial offset points at which a threat can viably shoot you, at speed. HOBS helps but is of equal advantagement in that, if both sides have it, the guy who holds to a tangential not direct intercept with the other guys HCA is going to use his HMDS to put a round in the air before he goes quartering and his visual silouhette becomes an easy acquisition for the other guy.
Once you have (made the mistake) of going visual with radar rounds or a full-bay Wingman still available, getting the heat-shot off the airframe and into the guys decision cycle at decent but not extreme aspect is what it's all about because then you can start to put your own exit or reposition moves on the table. Whereas running right down his throat may slightly delay the nose-on acquisition cycle. But it will also buy you a dead man's vengeance with little or nothing to be done about it but slam the EXCM panic button and pray his weapon fuzing is off.
In this, a pilot who is trained to make use of offset conversions and a lot of 'he is here, I will turnin to set the shot when he comes out from under my airframe over there' can win a lot of fights compared to the guy used to running a fixed GCI vector or whatever. But only to the extent that said guy doesn't FOLLOW his GCI to keep cranking back into your nose and forcing the nose on 'little plane sees big plane shots fired' outcome.
The simple fact of the matter (for U.S.) is that we have to come a long ways to the fight with a platform that is optimized to score few vs. many kills via a heavy radar weapons system. The combination of fuel useage restrictions on the bad end of long mission radius and the wing area to lift both said gas and radar missiles tends to size the platform to the extent that a maneuvering fight 'turns you' into one giant bullseye-in-sky for little gain in absolute perfomance margin to win (wingarea at altitude is offset by drag and signature-as-throttle requirements to overcome the inertia effect on total platform mass).
A latemodel F-16 with IPE or EFE will, without too much effort, beat an F-14/15/Su-27 in 90% of close in, subsonic, fights even fairly high up, simply because it is cheap enough to saturate in numbers. And small enough to get away with making large scale changes in aspect and fight plane with simple missiles.
It's still too costly to just throw away (because the large fighters will take 65-75% of them out in the BVR phase), even assuming you could find skilled pilots to volunteer.
But it is the starting conditions of the visual fight that the smaller airframe creates which dictates the math by which most outcomes will be modeled. Not the pilot skill which all that performance 'inspires to greatness'.
Now take this to the level of an F-22 which may well have upwards of FIVE MILES of (WVR) starting slant as supercruise restricted height advantagement as well as the detection threshold VLO issue on it's side. The F-16 cannot play up to it's level. Why should the Raptor degrade itself coming down? Indeed, why stay /in the fight/ long enough to pass overhead?
>>
The realm of ACM with acute manueverability has just be stepped into. This is new territory, and the red book hasn't been written. How many fully operational squadrons have been flying in this super manueverable realm uptill now?Call me 'shortsighted' but I can't think of many..
>>
The key is to remember that when -both sides have it- it will largely cancel itself out until and unless you create a dedicated sweep-mission platform which is specifically designed to exploit that capability alone.
During ODS that might have been a useful capability to have as I know an F-15 pilot, with full Musket and E-3 capability, who came within an inch as a mile of blowing away an RAF Tornado determinedly flying in his own little world, against the stream of traffic.
Today, the question becomes whether shifting towards dedicated A2A UCAV is a useful thing to attempt to pioneer as a cheap and easy way for otherwise non-competing nations to stack the deck with throwaway airpower back towards Vietnam if not Korean era days of huge few-on-multi fights with F-104 levels of straightline performance and X-31 equivalent PSTM all in one airframe.
For the U.S. the need for a fully penetrating TARCAP is receding as not the S2A defenses potentially so lethal that the standoff capabilities of glide and cruise weapons to compensate for them make a terminal approach capability more about making our 'Allies' (just now becoming predominantly /LGB/ shooters) continue to be viable players than anything we need to do on our own.
To compensate for low purchased numbers of Raptor and/or a DEWS threat, the A2A UCAV looks a little better but the S2A problem is still there and why risk the LO technologies necessary for penetration to a very high risk terminal engagement mode apt to drop free-techbase gifts into our enemies hands when they copy it _not_ the Raptor?
Similarly, as long as we need to come 500-800nm from a given secure basing mode, we will always pay a sized-as-weight penalty. Even as we will also likely pay one in transit time (the strikers will be subsonic, the A2A -may- not be but won't be able to stick around lolligagging for the slowest marchers who WILL dictate the pace and positioning of the tankers as well...). Under these conditions of 1.5 raids per day it makes more sense to maximize numbers of A2G munitions every time you come over the fence than to 'sweep the skies' repeatedly because you can't definitively suppress and/or destroy the IADS threat the first time. With bombs.
Such a solution again being about 'better bullet theory' whereby you up the range of glide weapons to increase WEZ standoff. Or make cruise systems (MALD or ITALD with a 250lb warhead) cheap enough to be expended in numbers. It is not about making a rarely used support mission a dominant design driver in an of itself.
Again, the latter is particularly important when you consider the opposed (defensive) advantages that copying such a system brings to an enemy. We
haven't faced 60-80 threat airframes simultaneously engaged since MiG Alley if not The Ruhr. A small turbo-SAM or A2A UCAV could give a podunk
threat exactly that kind of capability, not least because they come 'expert trained and wooden round prepackaged' without any subsequent
currency/deployment/ops account requirements to add to their initial purchase cost. Because they are unmanned, you can purposefully design them to
the 'how many do I have to lose before I can start winning?' suicidal-bravery threshold of soaking the BVR attrition to get to the WVR sweet spot of
tactical performance. And because they are mobile in a way that no SAM system ever will be, they can be in-air (or not, using a roadbase launch away
from the MOBS) and even sacrificially loitered (far from any possible RTB) in such a way as to REACT TO the onrush of any threat system. Even one
using glide kits and propulsion to up the standoff.
If 100 planes 'step on the snake' of one S-300 site, the S-300 is still going to lose. It may cost a third to half the batteries ready-load of 48-64 SAMs as airframe kills but somebody will spike the Flap Lid or Clam Shell and that will be that. OTOH, if someone sends up 30-40 fighters (as the equivalent purchase price of a 100 million dollar SAM battery) that is not 1-2 suppression kills to win through. But a full _WINGS WORTH_ of discrete threats, each of which must be dealt with individually. Each of which must be /destroyed/, not jammed, spoofed or evaded. Because the UCAV, upon first-pass missing, will simply come back around and try-try again. Lastly and of particularly relevance to the USAF high-fast doctrine, a UCAV that searches optically as a pack hunter cannot be fooled by range or weather or individual gaps in it's coverage. Because it will simply reform the formation spacing and sweep forward to FIND the threat and the first wolf to do so will put up a howl that will focus the attention of every one of it's wingmates. Those close enough to make a difference (I see 4 jets at XXbyYYbyZZ 10 of you come to my call) will come a-runnin'.
And the local odds will stack rapidly to the extent that you may have 4 vs. 12 which are a lot longer odds than 1vs.3.
>>
But you can bet the guys who have been fully-Ops on these fighters(for sometime now) are developing new radical doctrines in close-in ACM.
Do these include clauses on the combat cousins of the kulbit, mongoose, cobra etc..? Maybe, maybe not..I'm putting my money on it though
>>
I would not want to dogfight a MiG-21 Lancer or Bison with an F-22 that was carrying 20-25,000lbs of fuel, period-dot.
With Python or Archer, the MiG becomes a possible HOBS winner 'just because it played' and again suggests bad decisioning to commit to the merge to begin with when you can simply COE drive around it.
Not least because if you blow off all **twelve** AIM-120C7/D and _still_ the threat keeps coming, you are operating under threat conditions where any slow-down, ramp-down acceptance of a subsequent WWF style dogfight is unwise for what it locks you down to in space and time vs. any other threats still out there. OTOH, if you are only carrying two AMRAAM as a function of GBU-32/39 ground target commitment, you equally have no business playing at Red Baron because you are being depended upon to hit key installations which effect broader (geographic area as networked positive airspace control) mission goals. Particularly, ingress potential by other systems vs. a constant of defensive S2A fires (SAMs may only get one try per shot but they 'never go away', that MiG-21 will be lucky to reach you at 40K and Mach 1.5 and when it does, it's gonna be in an instant fuel emergency RTB condition after the first as only salvo...).
The dynamics of close in combat doctrine are thus less important than the _mission set_ to which you are expected to exploit your expanded weapons system and VLO capabilities to achieve useful theater objectives beyond the pure AAW mission. The F-22 is closer in this to being an F-15E than an F-15A, it's just that it has the energy and stealth advantages NOT to be forced to -fight- as a Strike Eagle would. Always down and into the threat defenses.
Boys being boys the very big-ego world over, I expect the Raptor jocks will constantly hammer their new-toy airframe with needless ACM drills, fatigueing it unnecessarily and wasting valuable flight hours 'practicing for stupidity'. But overall, doctrine will build upon the F-15 much as F-15 tactics built upon the F-4 and then (hopefully) be mutated entirely away from the dedicated NAPFAG mission as the GBU-39 and Blk.20 comes online.
And in THAT scenario, only the platinum bullet inventory and expanded A2G mission set will matter in dictating whether 'new tactics' restrict dueling for it's own sake until better solutions arrive. As I have often said, the next dominant air superiority platform will probably be a 1.2MW COIL equipped 747 with near LOS capability (1,000km against coaltitude targets anyway) ability to deal with threat air as it presents itself. ATL in a diode-pumped package on a JSF will be the principle means of beating inbound threat missiles and UCAVs. And so the Raptor had better do _something useful_, other than A2A, or it will be the USAF Tomcat, too specialist little, too late.
>>
The UCAVs(if made to be highly manueverable someday) would be deadly if they were allowed to engage autonomously(free of remote ctrl)thus only limited by electronic/mechanical boundaries. If controlled though, their performance would be restricted to situtuational awareness of the controller(s) and his/their 'persistance of vision'/framerate.
>>
No. You fly a UCAV like any other airframe, on autopilot, down a route corridor in a wide skirmish line sweep of overlapped optical search cones sweeping back and forth, if it finds something enroute, it engages either autonomously. Or with preprogrammed (by UCAV combat controller backseater) geometry inserts that look like pages from a football playbook-
i15.ebayimg.com...
www.tothenextlevel.org...
The machines fight _better_ (faster than a human decision cycle can OODA integrate with) than any human ever could, even assuming that LINK security and lag/bandwidth useage issues could be overcome.
And so drones are better off if left to themselves with pack coordination as programmed instinct: "Look over here I am! Now brother, bite his hamstring!". Because especially as advanced LO proliferates, there will still be instances in which you just aren't sure whether the the bogey is just strangled parrot damaged or STUPID as a friendly. Or is really a lone wolf hunter out to exploit the confusion. And if you have an optical hunting, cheap, UCAV you can go find out. Whether you then turn the coherent headlamp on him from 200nm away or start wrasslin'.
CONCLUSION:
There is indeed a 'pilot skill threshold' which drives ACM towards levels of acceptable who-kills-dominantly expectation of visual range fighting. Unfortunately, it is the design of the airfame and particularly it's exclusion of the equally valid manned system limitations on absolute performance at cost which determines whether or not you will get there. Through the BVR phase. Because in an age of missiles, the ultimate 'dogfight' is always Airframe vs. AAM, not Man vs. Man. It hasn't been Man vs. Man since 1957 or whenever it was that the RoCAF blew away their mainland brethren over the Formosa Straits.
KPl.
[edit on 15-1-2007 by ch1466]
If 100 planes 'step on the snake' of one S-300 site, the S-300 is still going to lose. It may cost a third to half the batteries ready-load of 48-64 SAMs as airframe kills but somebody will spike the Flap Lid or Clam Shell and that will be that. OTOH, if someone sends up 30-40 fighters (as the equivalent purchase price of a 100 million dollar SAM battery) that is not 1-2 suppression kills to win through. But a full _WINGS WORTH_ of discrete threats, each of which must be dealt with individually. Each of which must be /destroyed/, not jammed, spoofed or evaded. Because the UCAV, upon first-pass missing, will simply come back around and try-try again. Lastly and of particularly relevance to the USAF high-fast doctrine, a UCAV that searches optically as a pack hunter cannot be fooled by range or weather or individual gaps in it's coverage. Because it will simply reform the formation spacing and sweep forward to FIND the threat and the first wolf to do so will put up a howl that will focus the attention of every one of it's wingmates. Those close enough to make a difference (I see 4 jets at XXbyYYbyZZ 10 of you come to my call) will come a-runnin'.
And the local odds will stack rapidly to the extent that you may have 4 vs. 12 which are a lot longer odds than 1vs.3.
>>
But you can bet the guys who have been fully-Ops on these fighters(for sometime now) are developing new radical doctrines in close-in ACM.
Do these include clauses on the combat cousins of the kulbit, mongoose, cobra etc..? Maybe, maybe not..I'm putting my money on it though
>>
I would not want to dogfight a MiG-21 Lancer or Bison with an F-22 that was carrying 20-25,000lbs of fuel, period-dot.
With Python or Archer, the MiG becomes a possible HOBS winner 'just because it played' and again suggests bad decisioning to commit to the merge to begin with when you can simply COE drive around it.
Not least because if you blow off all **twelve** AIM-120C7/D and _still_ the threat keeps coming, you are operating under threat conditions where any slow-down, ramp-down acceptance of a subsequent WWF style dogfight is unwise for what it locks you down to in space and time vs. any other threats still out there. OTOH, if you are only carrying two AMRAAM as a function of GBU-32/39 ground target commitment, you equally have no business playing at Red Baron because you are being depended upon to hit key installations which effect broader (geographic area as networked positive airspace control) mission goals. Particularly, ingress potential by other systems vs. a constant of defensive S2A fires (SAMs may only get one try per shot but they 'never go away', that MiG-21 will be lucky to reach you at 40K and Mach 1.5 and when it does, it's gonna be in an instant fuel emergency RTB condition after the first as only salvo...).
The dynamics of close in combat doctrine are thus less important than the _mission set_ to which you are expected to exploit your expanded weapons system and VLO capabilities to achieve useful theater objectives beyond the pure AAW mission. The F-22 is closer in this to being an F-15E than an F-15A, it's just that it has the energy and stealth advantages NOT to be forced to -fight- as a Strike Eagle would. Always down and into the threat defenses.
Boys being boys the very big-ego world over, I expect the Raptor jocks will constantly hammer their new-toy airframe with needless ACM drills, fatigueing it unnecessarily and wasting valuable flight hours 'practicing for stupidity'. But overall, doctrine will build upon the F-15 much as F-15 tactics built upon the F-4 and then (hopefully) be mutated entirely away from the dedicated NAPFAG mission as the GBU-39 and Blk.20 comes online.
And in THAT scenario, only the platinum bullet inventory and expanded A2G mission set will matter in dictating whether 'new tactics' restrict dueling for it's own sake until better solutions arrive. As I have often said, the next dominant air superiority platform will probably be a 1.2MW COIL equipped 747 with near LOS capability (1,000km against coaltitude targets anyway) ability to deal with threat air as it presents itself. ATL in a diode-pumped package on a JSF will be the principle means of beating inbound threat missiles and UCAVs. And so the Raptor had better do _something useful_, other than A2A, or it will be the USAF Tomcat, too specialist little, too late.
>>
The UCAVs(if made to be highly manueverable someday) would be deadly if they were allowed to engage autonomously(free of remote ctrl)thus only limited by electronic/mechanical boundaries. If controlled though, their performance would be restricted to situtuational awareness of the controller(s) and his/their 'persistance of vision'/framerate.
>>
No. You fly a UCAV like any other airframe, on autopilot, down a route corridor in a wide skirmish line sweep of overlapped optical search cones sweeping back and forth, if it finds something enroute, it engages either autonomously. Or with preprogrammed (by UCAV combat controller backseater) geometry inserts that look like pages from a football playbook-
i15.ebayimg.com...
www.tothenextlevel.org...
The machines fight _better_ (faster than a human decision cycle can OODA integrate with) than any human ever could, even assuming that LINK security and lag/bandwidth useage issues could be overcome.
And so drones are better off if left to themselves with pack coordination as programmed instinct: "Look over here I am! Now brother, bite his hamstring!". Because especially as advanced LO proliferates, there will still be instances in which you just aren't sure whether the the bogey is just strangled parrot damaged or STUPID as a friendly. Or is really a lone wolf hunter out to exploit the confusion. And if you have an optical hunting, cheap, UCAV you can go find out. Whether you then turn the coherent headlamp on him from 200nm away or start wrasslin'.
CONCLUSION:
There is indeed a 'pilot skill threshold' which drives ACM towards levels of acceptable who-kills-dominantly expectation of visual range fighting. Unfortunately, it is the design of the airfame and particularly it's exclusion of the equally valid manned system limitations on absolute performance at cost which determines whether or not you will get there. Through the BVR phase. Because in an age of missiles, the ultimate 'dogfight' is always Airframe vs. AAM, not Man vs. Man. It hasn't been Man vs. Man since 1957 or whenever it was that the RoCAF blew away their mainland brethren over the Formosa Straits.
KPl.
[edit on 15-1-2007 by ch1466]
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