Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR Miss

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

Jeff Head said:

But, in any major conflict where large numbers of aircraft were invovled seeking air superiority over any particular area...once the missiles are used up, it comes down to being able to continue to press the attack (or defense) and mix it up close in with manueverability and guns...in a knife fight.

I believe that a modern aircraft has to have both to cover this eventuality...and it will allow a force that does have it to have an advantage in the end over a force that does not. They must also have the electronics and good missiles to get to that stage.

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This is where having good AWACS and electronic warfare suite will help. Groups of aircraft are still an army of sorts and an army fight as a group not individually. A properly conduct air combat minimizes the "ball of aircraft chaos". In the Bekaa Valley air battle, the IAF commander only sent 4 ship flights of F-15 at a time towards the Bekaa, they fire their missiles, then head back to base to rearm. The next 4 ship F-15 then takes over, sort of a rotating frequency.

This tactic minimizes friendly fire, especially with the proliferation of BVR missiles, and allows for coordinated attack and defence. Air combat, like all combat, gives victory to those who can fight as a group.



From the command center, Ivry had the E-2C air picture plus F-15s capable of sorting out engagements at shorter range. IAF pilots relied frequently on VHF radio, hoping to preserve their tactical communications and links to the command post.

Ivry's tactic was to vector four-ship formations of Israeli fighters into the engagement zone, one at a time. Each air battle lasted one to two minutes. Ivry did not want to let any more than one four-ship into the battle area. "Never mind if I'm not going to catch all the MiGs" he said; he wanted "to be on the safe side that I'm not going to intercept one of ours."

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

Jeff Head said:

Here is why you still need agile fighters that are good in a knife fight. In any general engagement, sooner or later, the missiles run out. When that happens you are left with dogfights, up close and personal with 20 mic mic, or whatever else they are armed with.

The US learned this in Vietnam with the F-4 which was filled with missiles, but had no gun. When the missiles ran out, they had to leave. If they did not get all of the MIGs they had to leave the MIGs in control of the airspace.

Same holds today.

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Jeff,

Agreed to your points, that in knife fights a agile fighter is required to sort each other. But, then again we are not likely to press our Typhoon, Rafale with Mig-21 Bison in Knife fight ......... do we???

This is also not the time where airfoces have inventorries running in thousands of aircraft to run a war of attrition in Knife fight. If that is the case, doesn't it make sense to have a large inventory of Mig-21 in the face of Typhoon/Rafale samll fleet. ($3Billion for what,some 14 Rafale??)

This again brings up the question of need for say Rafale over Mirage 2000 purely airframe wise??. What exactly do Rafale brings for countries looking for aircraft which Mirage does not/could not do?? Range/payload/sensors.....each of these is incremental increase only not a game changer.

Don't you think that Rafale/Typhoon is just me too in the race for new and improved .......like Mega/G Hz of PC ... when an F-16/Mirage 2000 can do the job needed?? They were designed in the 80's era when as you rightly mentioned Vietnam, as the source of the design, which is not relevant anymore??

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

Who is buying 14 Rafale for 3 billion?

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

crobato said:

Who is buying 14 Rafale for 3 billion?

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A small country with its small leader called Libya..

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

The AIM 9L all aspect Missile, did not required a tail chase position to lock on to a tailpane. Soon after AIM-9L deployment, the existing air combat tactics were obsolete, since instantaneous turning performance became far importent than sustained turning performance. The ability to point nose at opponent and quikly fire a Missile became far more important than the ability to follow through multiple turning manuvers to acquire a tail aspect heat seeking position.


Do we see a change in combat tactics with AIM-9X, IRIS-T/HMDS combo here? How much paradigm shift you see here pertaioning to the platform, as well as tactics?

Hate to compare platforms, but how much Typhoon/Rafale/SU-30 worth in combat against Mirage 2000, Gripen? Do bigger, better manuverable designed as it is from 80's studies .........still relevant in the time of quantum jump in Avaianics........than aerodynamic design??

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

Titanium said:

Do we see a change in combat tactics with AIM-9X, IRIS-T/HMDS combo here? How much paradigm shift you see here pertaioning to the platform, as well as tactics?

Hate to compare platforms, but how much Typhoon/Rafale/SU-30 worth in combat against Mirage 2000, Gripen? Do bigger, better manuverable designed as it is from 80's studies .........still relevant in the time of quantum jump in Avaianics........than aerodynamic design??

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Actually, there was a recent issue of Air Forces Monthly (March 2008) that explored the extremes behind this question: the trade-off between super-maneuverability and thrust vectoring (like the MiG-29OVT and Su-30MKI), versus advances in high-off-boresight air-to-air missiles and helmet mounted sights.

The article makes a case for the advantages of both sets of technology, pointing out that

In simulated dogfights with conventional F/A-18 aircraft, the X-31 racked up an impressive 8:1 kill-to-loss ratio.

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and that US studies performed by Boeing concluded that,

In the hands of a properly trained opponent, who understood the intrinsic weak points of the F-15 Eagle, an opposing Su-30MKI could expect to defeat the F-15C "every time". Not most engagements, not even the majority of the engagements - all of the engagements.

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The article also concluded, however, that high-off-boresignt missile technology was truly a game changer - one that turned many western air forces off from thrust vectoring technology. TVC was once a "must have" technology for the Eurofighter Typhoon. Now it's been shelved for the foreseeable future. In engagements between US Air Force F-16s and Luftwaffe MiG-29s,

It was reported that the MiG would achieve that all important, first shot, first kill opportunity in virtually every visual range engagement. As powerful as thrust-vectoring technology had been, the impact of a high off-boresight missile, combined with a helmet-mounted sight, was expected to be even greater. Simulated kill-to-loss ratios were reportedly as high as 50:1, depending on the weapons and tactics employed.

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So yes, weapons like R-73, Python 4/5, AIM-9X, and IRIS-T will almost certainly change the tactics employed.

Of course, given the option, who wouldn't want to combine TVC fighter and HOBs missile technology, to achieve the best of both worlds?

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

Titanium said:

when an F-16/Mirage 2000 can do the job needed?? They were designed in the 80's era when as you rightly mentioned Vietnam, as the source of the design, which is not relevant anymore??

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I believe it is still relevant. Once the shooting starts on any prolonged and major conflict...then there will be times when you run out of missiles. If that is all you have, you will then have to retire. if not, if you have a gun, then you will have to get in there and tango with the other side if you expect to control the sky.

Now, in a small conflict with only a small number of limited air engagements, or in a wholly lopsided affair like the US against Iraq, this is not the case. But all warfare cannot be guarunteed to be that way in the future.

If there are large conflicts with large air actions that are prolontged, then being able to actually dogfight will give one side or the other an advantage if they desire to press an attack all the way home.

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

Titanium said:

A small country with its small leader called Libya..

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It seems that the additional contract may have something to do with setting up the infrastructure and training needed to sustain the aircraft. This infrastructure, Libya has little.

From what I remember, Dassault canned the Mirage 2000 because it does not cost any cheaper significantly to build compared to a Rafale. The actual manufacturing cost of the aircraft is becoming only a small fraction of the contract price.

As for what Jeff said, this is true but in a way bigger than just an aircraft running out missiles. You can in fact, ran out of the entire inventory back in your base, and even in your entire country. Especially when such missiles are SO expensive, the customer country can only buy a small number of them. Worst yet, if the missile depot gets destroyed by a preemptive strike. For example, Taiwan only has a 120 something AMRAAMs. Once you start running out of your expensive missiles, you start to dig deeper and start using your old, tail aspect only missiles, and once that is out not just in your aircraft but in your base and national inventory, you are left with GUNS.

There are also some missiles that will malfunction for some reason or another, from manufacturing defects to poor handling to simply getting spoofed by decoys or jamming.

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

IDonT said:

Supermanueverability is a bonus, IMO, in modern air combat. It is a nice thing to have but victory in an air contest depends on who has the electronic superiority. The ability to "see" the battlefield, which allows you to prepare the battlefield, which allows you to fight your fight not the enemies, is much more important the the ability to do aerobatic stunts.

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i totally disagree, having the ability to out-turn other planes allow you to be able to lock on to the other plane, stay on their butt, put them on defensive. If you are behind a F-22, it's going to have a much tougher time locking onto you. And having super flight performance helps you to dictate the engagement, it can help in so many areas.

Re: Is agile, manuverable aircraft relevent in the era of advanced avainoics and BVR

unknauthr said:

Actually, there was a recent issue of Air Forces Monthly (March 2008) that explored the extremes behind this question: the trade-off between super-maneuverability and thrust vectoring (like the MiG-29OVT and Su-30MKI), versus advances in high-off-boresight air-to-air missiles and helmet mounted sights.

The article makes a case for the advantages of both sets of technology, pointing out that

and that US studies performed by Boeing concluded that,


The article also concluded, however, that high-off-boresignt missile technology was truly a game changer - one that turned many western air forces off from thrust vectoring technology. TVC was once a "must have" technology for the Eurofighter Typhoon. Now it's been shelved for the foreseeable future. In engagements between US Air Force F-16s and Luftwaffe MiG-29s,

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If we equate TVC to ultra-manuverability, West after studying both TVC and HMS, adopted HMS, rather than TVC, which would have brought Ultra-Manuverability to their Typhoon/rafale/F-16 ..etc.

So can we conclude that HOBS/HMD combo is IN than the Super-Manuverability of TVC?