May 2001 article at: http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/idr/idr010529_1_n.shtml

quoted below:
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"Fighter Tactics

Bill Sweetman

New-generation aircraft such as the Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon and F-22 are in service now or under test. Most attention is naturally focused on airframe-related advances - stealth, supersonic maneuverability and so on - but it is smaller, often overlooked details that may bring about a revolution in air combat and bring about some of the most important changes since the advent of the missile-armed supersonic fighter in the 1960s.

Within 10 years, many in-service fighters will be armed with new and much more lethal air-to-air missiles (AAMs). They will be carrying more advanced radars and other technologies which make it much less difficult to declare a target as hostile well beyond visual range. They will also be operating with tactical datalinks which allow several aircraft to share tactical information in a manner which is simply impossible for most aircraft today. Individual and formation tactics will change - but the implications of new technology are such that nobody knows exactly how that will happen.

AAM technology defines the depth of the air battle. "Whoever has the longest reach controls the engagement," comments fighter analyst Ben Lambeth of the Rand Corporation. Lambeth recalls flying on a mock engagement in 1996, a four-versus-four out of Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Florida. F-15s armed with the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range AAM (AMRAAM) took on four F-15s simulating MiG-29s armed with R-27 Alamo MRAAMs and R-73 Archer SRAAMs. "I never had a tally on any of the bad guys. I rarely saw our wingman. We never put more than 3g on the airplane and we never got inverted. There were missiles and people dying everywhere."

This result reflects today's level of technology, in which the within visual range (WVR) and beyond visual range (BVR) envelopes are separate. A BAE Systems paper from 1996 - reflecting the UK thinking that led to the adoption of the BAE Systems Meteor AAM for the Typhoon - points out that a target beyond 40km range "can feel free to maneuver without fear of engagement". This is echoed by Robert Shaw, former US Navy fighter pilot and author of Fighter Combat Tactics. "There is virtually no missile that you can't outmaneuver at maximum range."

With today's weapons, the BAE paper notes, most MRAAM engagements will take place between 15km and 40km-range. Older short-range AAMs "lack not only total energy but also missile speed" and are most lethal at ranges under 8km, according to BAE. Between 8km and 15km, therefore, there is a 'commit' zone where the target can still avoid a merge into close combat if the odds are unfavorable.

The key to the next generation of MRAAMs, such as Meteor, is greater range and (more importantly) greater energy at range. The result is a much larger "no-escape zone". This zone surrounds a target and defines the maximum range at which the target cannot out-maneuver a missile shot. The missile's kill probability may be almost constant from its minimum range out to 80km. (One issue here, observes Shaw, is that it may be difficult to confirm that the missile has found its target, particularly in poor visibility: this may be one reason why Meteor has a two-way datalink.)

Boeing has joined the Meteor program with the intention of marketing the missile in the US. The situation is complicated by the fact that the F-22 needs it less than other fighters. Earlier this year, F-22 chief test pilot Paul Metz confirmed that the F-22's speed and altitude capability acts as a booster stage for the common-or-garden AMRAAM. At M1.5 and at greater altitude than the target (the F-22 has a very fast climb rate and a service ceiling well above 50,000ft), AMRAAM's range is 50% greater than is the case in a subsonic, same-altitude launch.

New SRAAMs are faster than the AIM-9 (due to larger motors or smaller wings) and have new infrared (IR) dome materials which do not blind the seeker when they are heated by air friction. With imaging infrared (IIR) seekers, they are just as effective against a non-afterburning target as against a full-reheat target. Under some circumstances, a modern SRAAM is a BVR missile, capable of being cued on to the target by aircraft sensors and locking on to it at an extreme range of 12-20km. "You can expect to be engaged from about 80km inbound and enter a [MRAAM] no-escape zone shortly thereafter," notes the BAE paper. The commit decision must be made sooner and, if the target pilot commits, the target will enter an SRAAM no-escape zone.

Once the fighters 'merge' - that is, their momentum takes them within SRAAM range of each other, so that the first fighter to attempt to escape will offer his opponent an open tail-on shot - improved SRAAMs and helmet-mounted display (HMD) technology multiply the opportunities for WVR shots. It is no longer necessary to point the aircraft towards the adversary; any target within the field of regard of the missile seeker can be engaged instantly.

According to one source, US Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets from the Balkans theater recently engaged in mock combat with Israeli Air Force fighters. The Hornets were armed with AIM-9s, and the Israeli fighters carried Python 3 and Python 4 missiles and Elbit DASH helmet sights. IDR's source describes the results as "more than ugly", the Israelis prevailing in 220 out of 240 engagements.

There are lessons to be learned from this engagement and other tests which have shown similar results. One is that modern HMDs and SRAAMs are essential. A second lesson is that WVR combat is extremely dangerous and will become more so. "We'll see less dogfighting once we get the ability to engage targets 90º off the nose," says Shaw. "Somebody's going to get a shot, and if the missile is lethal you're going to get hit." Even the recent history of engagements suggests that the 'furball' of fighter combat, with multiple engagements spread across miles of sky, is on its way out. "We don't see a history of high-g maneuvering in recent engagements," says one industry analyst. "It's fun to practice but unwise to pursue."

A third lesson is that WVR is an equalizer. "An F-5 or a MiG-21 with a high-off-boresight missile and HMD is as capable in a 1-v-1 as an F-22," comments a former navy fighter pilot, now a civilian program manager. "In visual combat, everybody dies at the same rate," says RAND's Lambeth. Indeed, he says that a larger fighter like the F-22 may be at a disadvantage. In the early 1980s force-on-force exercises at the navy's Top Gun fighter school, F-14s were routinely seen and shot down by smaller F-5s flown by the navy's Aggressor units. An F-22 which slows down to enter a WVR combat also gives up the advantage of supersonic maneuverability.

Close range confrontation
Nevertheless, the experts consulted by IDR agreed that the fighter still needs to have the ability to fight at close range - including having a gun. The current state of the debate on this highly controversial piece of equipment is that the F-22 has a gun - indeed, its M61A2 installation, complete with a neat power-actuated door over the muzzle, is one of the most complex ever seen - as does the US Air Force (USAF) version of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The US Navy (USN) had apparentlyy decided at one point to forgo the gun on the JSF - which is primarily intended as a deep-strike aircraft - but Boeing program managers now say that there is an "ongoing debate" on the subject. The marines, concerned about vertical landing weight, have settled on a 'missionized' gun, installed in a package that replaces an internal bomb station. Both JSF competitors have selected a Boeing-developed version of the Mauser BK 27mm cannon, fitted with a linkless feed system by Western Design. The UK Royal Air Force has considered eliminating the gun from its second tranche of Typhoons, not so much to save weight as to eliminate training and support costs. "

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I'll hold off on many comments... except to note that before I got out, the typical BVR air-to-air training setup called for double the range/airspace.

A lot of the talk does remind me of earlier times. Improved weapons systems/missile capabilities do add other dimensions to tactical discussions. Tactical considerations come into play at longer ranges with AMRAAM engagements. High-off-boresight missiles combined with HMDs add some interesting twists to tactics, and within-visual-range maneuvering. (In the article's example above, only one aircaft, one side in the fight, had high-off-boresight missiles and a helmet mounted sight.)

For 30+ years, or more, it hasn't been the case where you could just drive to a merge and try to jump on a bandit's six. Improved AIM-7s, all-aspect AIM-9s, and then AMRAAMs (and foreign missile variants), along with improvements in aircraft ID capability, have had to be taken into account for a good number of years.

The implication, as it was in an earlier time, is that improved missiles are the answer to every question - Some said that visual dogfighting would become obsolete. I would say that these improvements may call for tactics to continue to evolve, but they add new dimensions rather than eliminate.
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Just throwing it out there...

Cheers mate a good read.Well it happened in Nam didn,t it.Took the guns off the Phantoms design then decided after losses to the Migs in close in knife fights,gee we better put them back in.As the planes change in design and capabilities sure tactics will always change.Even in WW2 tactics progressed from say the british side from the Vic to the rotten then the finger 4 as the americans called it.Tactics in the BoB changed to the european way of fighting then it had to change back in the Pacific.Spits would turn fight in Europe but against the Zero,s and Oscars would find it hopeless so had to Boom and Zoom instead.The basics are still there.Get on the enemy tail.Come in on the blind side.It will probably get to the stage where pilots will be obselete with robots scanning stealth Radar images to Id an apponent or using hidef satellite imagery then the true over the horizon combat will be the norm.

That reminds me...

The talk of UAVs completely replacing pilots/aircrew seems to have died down lately.

Maybe reality set in, or the call for funding has already been answered.

Nothing against UAVs - they're doing good things and getting better.

And it still takes a human to program it.Might be also have something to do with decision making in regards to target ID with collateral damage risks.

Actually, they didn't take the guns off of the Phantom, and then put them back on...it originally wasn't designed with any. The plane was intended as a Fleet defender, an airplane for the navy, only. It was supposed to lob missles at Soviet bombers attacking U.S. task forces.
Macnamara (did I spell that right?) forced it down the Air Forces throat. It was part of his "commonality program" where all of the services were going to get the same planes, to save money. He was a bean counter.
Experience proved that the concept was not realistic. They even had the navy testing F-111s on carriers. But experience also showed that the jet needed a gun. At least the Air Force thought so, anyway. Hence, the F4E. The navy stayed with it's gunless F4s and never bought it.
Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread and go on and on and.....

LoL cheers Pooch.So much for my worldly knowledge.This is what happens when you rely on memory than simply going over and picking up a book.Yes the word military Intelligence or Politician in regard to aircraft design don,t really go too well together.I could go on,and on,and on.....Hey a little madness doesn,t hurt.Thanks mate for that correction.

Related: sparked by a thread in "Community Hall" forum http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=142;t=003407

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From that HeraldToday article http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:cl4J...n&ct=clnk&cd=11 :

TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. - The Air Force's new F-22A Raptor is such a dominant fighter jet that in mock dogfights its pilots typically take on six F-15 Eagles at once.

Despite the favorable odds, the F-15s, still one of the world's most capable fighters, are no contest for the fastest radar-evading stealth jet ever built.

"The F-15 pilots, they are the world's best pilots," said Lt. Col. David Krumm, an F-22A instructor pilot. "When you take them flying against anyone else in the world, they are going to wipe the floor with them. It's a startling moment for them to come down here and get waylaid."

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Article: http://www.ausairpower.net/air-superiority-2.html

Quoted below:

Stealth means suppressing the radar cross section and infrared signatures of an aircraft to the point where it cannot be detected until it is several miles away, or even closer if we factor in lower performance in air intercept radars and missile seekers, compared to large ground based equipment. As a result, a stealthy aircraft can approach to weapons launch range without its opponent knowing it is there, launch its weapons and then vanish again.

No matter how good a conventional fighter is, and how good its missiles and sensors are, an engagement flown against a stealthy fighter aircraft is a no win proposition. The whole engagement can be summarised as "Deedle, deedle, deedle, BANG !". Your warning receiver blares away, you crank your head around to figure out what is happening, and you die as the inbound missile blows you to little pieces. It is indeed as simple as that. Situational awareness is everything in the first-shot-is-the-killing-shot game, and stealth takes away that situational awareness completely.

This is indeed why the F-22 Raptor is a revolutionary rather than evolutionary fighter. Certainly its basic high manoeuvrability aerodynamic design is evolutionary, its supercruise is also arguably evolutionary, but its use of stealth is clearly revolutionary. The combination of superior energy manoeuvrability, supersonic cruise and stealth is an unbeatable combination. Stealth denies the opponent awareness of the F-22, while the aircraft's superlative thrust-to-weight ratio and high speed allow it position itself and close for a kill before its victim can react.

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Further down on the same page above, "Stealth and Air Combat Doctrine", quoted below:

Stealth changes the tactical environment in fundamental ways. The first result of stealth is that the opponent cannot see the stealthy fighter on radar, or detect its radar on a warning receiver. Therefore, the stealthy fighter can locate, identify and stalk its opponent without being detected. A stealthy fighter can therefore exploit von Richtoven's fundamental axiom, approach its victim undetected and shoot from six o'clock before the opposing fighter even knows it is there.

To fully exploit its technological advantage, the stealthy fighter will therefore need to adopt hit-and-run ambush tactics and avoid being drawn into a "turn-and-burn" knife-fight-in-a-phone-booth. At ranges inside 3 miles, a stealthy fighter loses its basic advantage of undetectability, as it may be tracked visually, and an opposing fighter's radar and missiles can detect it and track it.

Therefore a stealthy fighter will maximise its survivability and lethality by staying outside its opponent's visual engagement envelope, positioning itself for a shot and then shooting a fire-and-forget missile.


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You want to hear some F-22 nay-sayers?
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00197

Quoted below:

The stellar attribute of the F-22 — its invisibility on enemy radar due to a computer-aided stealth design — is a “myth,” Sprey said. That is because in order to locate the enemy beyond visual range, the Raptor (like every other fighter) must turn on its own radar, immediately betraying its location.

Nor is the aircraft design effective simply because its advocates insist so, Sprey said. The 1980s-era F-117 stealth fighter was supposed to be invisible too, but post-Gulf War studies showed that the aircraft had been spotted by Iraq’s ground-based radars, he said.

And in the 77-day aerial campaign against Serbia in 1999, the adversary’s “1950s-era radar” managed to locate and shoot down two F-117s, Stevenson pointed out in his presentation. The situation is actually worse today, he said, because many nations have acquired advanced missiles that can home in on radar emissions.

“Who do you want in a dark alley?” Stevenson asked. “The cop with the flashlight, or the crook with a gun that fires light-homing bullets?”

Because the Raptor ultimately ballooned into a weapon that costs $361 million per copy, even Congress could not stomach the total program cost exceeding $65 billion, Sprey said. As a result, the Air Force is now committed to fielding a fighter program that lacks sufficient numbers to prevail in a major conflict, however effective the individual aircraft may be.

“Hitler had 70 Me-262s in combat,” Sprey said. “They were crushed by the force of 2,000 inferior P-51s that the United States had in the air.”

Early reports from mock deployments of the Raptor also show a major shortfall in the fighter’s sustainability in combat, Sprey said.

“The F-16 costs one-tenth of the F-22 and flies three times as often due to the issues of stealth, complexity and maintenance affecting the Raptor,” Sprey said. Sustainability and the number of aircraft available to fight on any given day, he added, are “vastly more important” than the quality of the F-22. “You have to have numerical superiority to win.”

On the last two points, maneuverability and capability for a “quick kill,” the two analysts assert that the Raptor is inferior to the F-16 and several allied fighter designs in the crucible of “energy-maneuverability.”

“Some (experts) assert that in the next air war,” all of the radars will be off and the air war will merge to air combat maneuvering,” Stevenson observed.

The Raptor’s performance in that mode will be “disastrous,” Sprey added.

“The only thing that will bail the U.S. Air Force out of this mess is the fact that they still have a lot of F-16s in service,” Sprey said, “The day they send the F-16s to the ‘boneyard’ is the day the service becomes a non-Air Force.”
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The many-vs-few setups with F-15 vs F-22, from the first article quoted, may provide some insight. More than likely, these would be extended range BVR setups where the F-22 could get off multiple shots before being targeted. We're not talking about a short-range within-visual-range setup here. An edge comes from "stealth" - low radar cross section leading to delayed detection - combined with the extended range capability of the radar and shot criteria for the F-22 (high launch speed, probably from high altitude, with a gee-whiz-wonderful new radar, would also extend launch ranges).

In the orginal article quoted above, it mentions one F-22 taking on six F-15C's at once - The F-22 carries 6 AMRAAMs. Does this 6-to-1 advantage assume a reliable "one shot, one kill" capability?

I could envision the F-22 attempting multiple long-range shots and turning and leaving before soaking up any shots. It would, under the right conditions, have an option to avoid short-range engagements. (The theory.)

Within the shorter within-visual-range arena, the F-22 would be at risk. (For example, stick a Python on a Mig-21, or any other airframe you'd care to mention, give the pilot a helmet-mounted sight, and it may be at least a potential equal in the visual arena.)

It's wrong to look at the F-22 as the next-generation VFR dogfighter. (The F-16 was great at that.) I'm not sure where the F-22 stands relative to an F-16, for example, on maneuverability.

Low production numbers are a concern - no getting around that one in some scenarios.

All other things being equal, "stealth" (and supersonic cruise, and the avionics/sensors, etc.) is an advantage - how much of an advantage and how long that advantage lasts are other questions.

machine-driven tactics

Found the CDI slides (links below).

"Pierre Sprey was one of the founding members of the so-called “fighter mafia” – the group that conceived America’s most successful modern combat aircraft: the F-15, the F-16, and the A-10."

Pierre Sprey’s briefing slides: Comparing a Quarter Century of Fighters (F-86 to F-18)
http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/Sprey%20Quarter%20Century.pdf

"James Stevenson is the former editor of the Navy Fighter Weapons School’s Topgun Journal and the author of two comprehensive books on the Navy’s F-18 and A-12 aircraft."

James Stevenson's briefing slides: F-22 Fighter Performance - How Does the F-22 Compare a Quarter Century Later?
http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/F-22%20Presentation%20CDI%204-7-06.pdf

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From the "F-22 Summary" at the end of Stevenson's slides:

quote below:
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- Radar missile Pk used to justify
- F-22 requires a leap of faith
That combat Pk will equal predictions - It never has
That IFF will work - It never has (even AWACS can't tell a Hind from a Blackhawk)
That enemy will not fire anti-radiation missiles - Russians are not selling anti-radiation missiles to our allies
That frequency-hopping radar will...(missing on slide, I'd assume it continues with something about inhibiting acquisition or countermeasures by the bad guys, whether it will work as advertised, or similar)
- F-22 costs prevent the purchase of adequate numbers - Original requirement was for 750 but increasing program acquisition unit cost of 3 for $1 billion, reduces quantity below 190
- F-22 does not have rearward visibility, acceleration, maneuverability, or persistence of previous era fighters
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end quote

Sprey's slides are a historical look, comparing some fighter attributes up through the F-18.

Stevenson's briefing opens with some shots at military leadership's ability, to make acquisition decisions, for example. Not that this is inherently bad, but it makes me wonder who their expected audience was, any agenda(?), etc.

As a little background:
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from: wikipedia on the F-16

"An informal and influential group nicknamed the "Fighter Mafia", among them systems analyst Pierre Sprey, test pilot Charles E. Meyers, test pilot Everest Riccioni, and former instructor pilot John Boyd, believed the F-15 was a move in the wrong direction. They argued that the F-15 was too large and expensive. Designed as a fast interceptor, it had a wide turn radius and was not well suited to close range dogfighting. The Fighter Mafia argued for a lighter fighter with superb maneuverability, that was cheap enough to deploy in numbers. These specifications became the Lightweight Fighter (LWF) program, begun in 1971.

The LWF specified a plane weighing 20,000 pounds (9,000 kg), half the weight of the F-15, stressing low cost, small size, range, and emphasising maneuverability — turn rate and acceleration — at the expense of top speed. Its ideal operating environment was intended to be under Mach 1.6 and 40,000 feet (12,000 m). Two companies were chosen during the concept stage: General Dynamics with the YF-16 design and Northrop with a design which bore the name YF-17 Cobra."
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Interestingly enough, the small, agile F-16, optimized as a day VFR dogfighter (with interdiction/CAS capability), underwent role shifts and additions, and heavier versions, and became a designated bomb hauler for all occasions - somewhat different from the original design intention.

Even F-15C's can drop bombs (and even hit the ground with them), and there was the later F-15E, so what about the F-22? With air-to-ground talk circulating in the background for the F-22 - a possible future FB-22? Maybe, after some of the shine wears off, and if the situation remains where (precision) ground-pounders see regular employment, while air-to-air types twiddle their thumbs. There may at least be mods to the F-22 that allow it to drop something other than a pair of GPS-guided bombs.

That the "Fighter Mafia" would have issues with another large and expensive interceptor/"air superiority" fighter shouldn't be a surprise.

Picture a quick debrief something like this:

"The six of us (F-15C's) set up at one end of the area. One F-22 went to the other end. After the initial radio calls to start the intercept, we pushed out. With no contacts and no warnings, we started receiving kill calls on us over the radio. We all ended up being called dead."

The technology seems to work. No special tactics needed. (The F-22 did "nothing special".)

How long will that kind of advantage last?
This advantage does also depend on missile reliability; and non-restrictive ROE.

To survive this kind of encounter, the Eagles may have to resort to some kind of timed beam/drag maneuvers to delay or spoil some of the long-range shots - Harder to do with no range or position information from GCI or other aircraft. (Without a pre-briefed setup and "fight's on" call, they wouldn't even know the F-22 was there.) They need to get to an angle or range where they can get a look. Get the F-22 to waste some shots. Have somebody survive to get close enough... One thing's for sure: Against an F-22 the "Wall of Eagles" won't work.

Possible solution: Bring more than 6 Eagles.

Papa_K