Is the above indicative of an engagement with HOBS and LOAL missile against a peer adversary fighter jet?
My understanding is that the above is from a F-16 engagement of a drone/cruise missile with a AIM-9M?
It's indicative of actual practice. And especially vector, because it shows that normal offbore targeting struggled to lock the (right) target, and drone is engaged instead using AMRAAM's own seeker in reserve mode (which is directly ahead).
Like, what's the point of waiting for True Daylight battlefleet engagement like Italian navy in ww2, when actual practice was midnight teeth and nails, point blank?
If the target is not even a peer adversary fighter jet, then how is it indicative of what modern air-to-air combat is?
Through practice. One of basic traits of peer long range combat appears that it's indecisive, and decisive action role increasingly gets transferred to those who can.
Threat posed by current AAMs is such that only very unpeer engagements with long range engagements are decisive.
Otherwise, sides exchange blows, maybe lose a few aircraft if they overestimate themselves, and that's it.
Unless you wish to say that modern A2A engagements are primarily against drones/cruise missiles ... in which case, even more so maneuverability to get on a boey's six is even less a factor than before?
You need to take firing position from a vector conductive to successful engagement, against slow target flying very low, often hiding in local terrain, trees, buildings and so on.
One may say, that Ukrainians and Americans aren't using best sensors and seekers possible. Counterargument is that shahed isn't even close to the level of mass produced stealth drone modern dark factory can manage.
Imagine hunting waves of cooled electric jet flying wings with return of around -70dB.
Offbore targeting in this situation will mostly kill local infrastructure rather than targets. Which, by the way, already happened with Dutch F-35 against a foam drone over Poland.
