Dogfighting in the F-15C.

[Skall]

Boom and zoom is an ambush tactic that uses excess energy and surprise (thus, ambush :) ). Energy fighting refers to knowing how to change the plane of your turn to alter your TC (as viewed from the bandit's turn plane) ... often this means using the vertical - a yo-yo is an example of energy fighting/management. Energy fighting is a very difficult subject, and I don't believe it is well covered in most literature.

 

Thanks. Now I know I need to hunt down some info on this elusive energy fighting business.

 

Silly question: what does TC stand for?

[GGTharos]

Sorry about that. TC = Turn circle, TR = Turn radius (but sometimes turn rate :D ).

[Skall]

Sorry about that. TC = Turn circle, TR = Turn radius (but sometimes turn rate :D ).

 

No need to apologize. You are and have been a huge help to this community. First thing I do when I have a question like this is look up any posts you might have on the subject. Though I feel you sometimes overestimate how little some of us know and underestimate how much you know. To you, answers are nuanced and situational, which is the mark of an experienced person. To someone like me, those nuances are barely conceivable.

 

It's the curse that befalls an experienced teacher. How do you take something that is complex and gradually transfer that knowledge to someone without overwhelming them.

 

I'm willing to learn one step at a time, even if it means having to review and revise what I thought was "right" in the face of new information.

[Skall]

Just came across this article. While it leaves me with more questions than answers, is it generally true about energy fighters?

 

http://trainers.hitechcreations.com/efight/efight.htm

[TAW_Blaze]

BnZ doesn't work with jets because you have other weapons than guns. If you try to separate at the wrong time you're dead even if you had superior energy. More often than not once you've commited into a dogfight your only option is to fight it out. Sometimes you can use the environment to hide and get away but that doesn't always work.

 

Probably a silly noobish question, but since the thread is opened already : I tried to dogfight a friend of mine in his Su27 with my F15 several times (spawn head on, guns only) and I always pretty much get my ass kicked. He always wins about 2:1. I checked the fights afterwards in tacview where I can see that even when I'm trying to stay at my corner he's just able to pull much tighter turns and is always able to get behind my back more easily (and he's by no means an ace pilot either:-)) I don't quite understand what to do in such situation. What other option then turning fight I have (other than run away) ? I read somewhere (probably here) that F15 is an "energy fighter" - how does that work ?

 

Flying at corner is not an automatic win button. Against a flanker, or to be honest, any aircraft, you want to finish the fight as fast as you can. In case of a flanker, in my experience if you don't win by the first 10-30 seconds you'll probably lose because the flanker gives his pilot a much bigger room for error.

 

Every fighter is an energy fighter.

Edited July 8, 2014 by <Blaze>

[GGTharos]

Not really an article that teaches you anything useful at all, and the fact that he calls 'turn and burn' 'stall fighting' just makes it fishy.

 

Turn and burn is an angles fight, and it has nothing to do with stalling your plane, or flying it near the stall. In fact, you can be flying near a stall in an energy fight - think of rolling scissors.

 

Flat scissors - rate/radius fight

Rolling scissors - the above plus energy fight

 

Just came across this article. While it leaves me with more questions than answers, is it generally true about energy fighters?

 

http://trainers.hitechcreations.com/efight/efight.htm

[Skall]

Not really an article that teaches you anything useful at all, and the fact that he calls 'turn and burn' 'stall fighting' just makes it fishy.

 

Turn and burn is an angles fight, and it has nothing to do with stalling your plane, or flying it near the stall. In fact, you can be flying near a stall in an energy fight - think of rolling scissors.

 

Flat scissors - rate/radius fight

Rolling scissors - the above plus energy fight

 

The article is rather nebulous but I think it cleared one thing up for me: all this time it sounded like energy fighting was an alternative to TnB and BnZ. Apparently it is not. It's more of a methodology than an exact tactic.

 

Given that the AI apparently cheats when it comes to energy, is it realistically possible to practice basic energy management against the AI to the point where good energy management on your behalf would beat the AI in a guns-only fight? Does it depend on the difficulty of the AI? (I don't really know how the higher difficulty settings affect AI in DCS).

 

Regarding your flat scissors comment, is rate referring to roll rate, turn rate or both?

[Skall]

Something else on energy fighting. Just trying to dig up what I can on the subject since this is apparently what Eagle pilots should be striving for.

 

http://www.musketeers.org/?page_id=85

[Bushmanni]

In Shaw's Fighter Combat - Tactics and Maneuvering, energy tactics is described in general as bleeding the bandits energy with certain maneuvers by inviting him to trade energy to angles and when sufficient energy advantage has been gained, using it through vertical maneuvering to gain a shooting position. This tactic generally requires you to give the bandit an opportunity for a snapshot at least but if done right you should be able to defeat his gun shot with maneuvering. Vertical maneuver means in this context pulling up (not necessarily purely vertical) and maneuvering on top of the bandit and then dropping on his six from above. This has to be done efficiently in order to not give the bandit room or time to gather energy and point his nose at you when you come down. Because you have sufficient energy advantage he can't follow you in the vertical but has to either gather speed at level flight and let you drop on his six or stall his plane when coming after you.

 

In practice this is pretty hard to do with modern planes as they have lots of thrust to point the nose upwards even at slow speeds and excellent gun sights that make snapshots and long range tracking shots very dangerous. Still you need to be turning close to the enemy at all times as giving too much separation gives him opportunity for a missile shot.

 

Basically when you are using energy tactics you are turning with the bandit as with angles tactics. Instead of trying to get closer to his six o'clock position you try to keep yourself within missile min range and out of gunsights and gradually build energy advantage in either speed, altitude or both to get high enough on top of him. There's really no signature move that tells if a pilot is using energy tactics or angles tactics but it's evident in what the pilot tries to gain with his moves.

 

Whether to use energy or angles tactics depends on lot of things like tactical situation, weapons available to participants and relative plane characteristics. Fighter A might be better of with energy tactics against fighter B but angles tactics work better against fighter C. Against fighter D (and always A) both tactics work so tactical situation and personal preference could be more important factors.

[Skall]

In Shaw's Fighter Combat - Tactics and Maneuvering, energy tactics is described in general as bleeding the bandits energy with certain maneuvers by inviting him to trade energy to angles and when sufficient energy advantage has been gained, using it through vertical maneuvering to gain a shooting position. This tactic generally requires you to give the bandit an opportunity for a snapshot at least but if done right you should be able to defeat his gun shot with maneuvering. Vertical maneuver means in this context pulling up (not necessarily purely vertical) and maneuvering on top of the bandit and then dropping on his six from above. This has to be done efficiently in order to not give the bandit room or time to gather energy and point his nose at you when you come down. Because you have sufficient energy advantage he can't follow you in the vertical but has to either gather speed at level flight and let you drop on his six or stall his plane when coming after you.

 

In practice this is pretty hard to do with modern planes as they have lots of thrust to point the nose upwards even at slow speeds and excellent gun sights that make snapshots and long range tracking shots very dangerous. Still you need to be turning close to the enemy at all times as giving too much separation gives him opportunity for a missile shot.

 

Basically when you are using energy tactics you are turning with the bandit as with angles tactics. Instead of trying to get closer to his six o'clock position you try to keep yourself within missile min range and out of gunsights and gradually build energy advantage in either speed, altitude or both to get high enough on top of him. There's really no signature move that tells if a pilot is using energy tactics or angles tactics but it's evident in what the pilot tries to gain with his moves.

 

Whether to use energy or angles tactics depends on lot of things like tactical situation, weapons available to participants and relative plane characteristics. Fighter A might be better of with energy tactics against fighter B but angles tactics work better against fighter C. Against fighter D (and always A) both tactics work so tactical situation and personal preference could be more important factors.

 

Thanks. I really have to get around to reading that book. It would be awesome to see a practical display of this approach to combat at work from within DCS. I get the gist but an example would be extremely helpful. Videos, tracks, tacview files, whatever. I'd love to see this style in action.

[Skall]

Speaking of old posts made by GG, I just found this on a google search. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=76775

 

Gonna put it up here to read when I get home. Finally getting out of work.

[GGTharos]

Given that the AI apparently cheats when it comes to energy, is it realistically possible to practice basic energy management against the AI to the point where good energy management on your behalf would beat the AI in a guns-only fight? Does it depend on the difficulty of the AI? (I don't really know how the higher difficulty settings affect AI in DCS).

 

For a whole bunch of reasons, not just 'cheating', which isn't that big a deal - the AI not suitable as a training partner in a lot of situations.

 

Regarding your flat scissors comment, is rate referring to roll rate, turn rate or both?

 

Turn rate. Unless roll rate gives you a huge advantage/disadvantage, we don't normally talk about it ... but it can definitely be a factor.

[GGTharos]

Another article that likes to start on the wrong foot. Energy fighters WILL do horizontal turns as/when necessary. Why get complicated if you do not have to? Angles fighting is not to be avoided - it is present in all air to air combat where the bandit is not right on your dead 12 flying straight and level. Energy fighting is there to add another dimension to pure angles fighting - simply put, a pilot that is good at energy fighting is a better pilot. The biggest bunch of BS is that if you're in an 'energy fighter' you must 'energy fight'. Not the case. If your plane is so horrible at turning (eg: F-104) but good at doing one-pass, haul-you-know-what, you're not going to turn with the other guy, and you can't employ energy tactics.

 

What's an energy fighter? An F-15? Why? It can out-turn a MiG-21 and out-climb it, so is it an angles fighter now? How about a Su-27? The eagle turns a bit worse at slower speeds, but it out-climbs the flanker at medium to high altitudes. Is it an energy fighter now?

 

Ok, how about if a flanker comes zooming in at M1.2 and the Eagle is flying happy at 0.9, they enter a one-circle fight ... is the eagle an energy fighter NOW?

 

You can very generally think of the tactics to use against another aircraft in terms of energy vs angles fighter, but the facts is that the tactics you end up using DEPEND on what everyone in the fight is doing.

 

Forget all this internet stuff, go straight to the very basic BFM training taught by the USN.

 

No, it isn't complete and it doesn't tell you everything - and you really want to have an instructor come with it. But it's a whole lot better than many other things out there.

 

http://www.cnatra.navy.mil/pubs/folder5/t45/p-1289.pdf

 

Something else on energy fighting. Just trying to dig up what I can on the subject since this is apparently what Eagle pilots should be striving for.

 

http://www.musketeers.org/?page_id=85

Edited July 8, 2014 by GGTharos

[Skall]

Another article that likes to start on the wrong foot. Energy fighters WILL do horizontal turns as/when necessary. Why get complicated if you do not have to? Angles fighting is not to be avoided - it is present in all air to air combat where the bandit is not right on your dead 12 flying straight and level. Energy fighting is there to add another dimension to pure angles fighting - simply put, a pilot that is good at energy fighting is a better pilot. The biggest bunch of BS is that if you're in an 'energy fighter' you must 'energy fight'. Not the case. If your plane is so horrible at turning (eg: F-104) but good at doing one-pass, haul-you-know-what, you're not going to turn with the other guy, and you can't employ energy tactics.

 

What's an energy fighter? An F-15? Why? It can out-turn a MiG-21 and out-climb it, so is it an angles fighter now? How about a Su-27? The eagle turns a bit worse at slower speeds, but it out-climbs the flanker at medium to high altitudes. Is it an energy fighter now?

 

Ok, how about if a flanker comes zooming in at M1.2 and the Eagle is flying happy at 0.9, they enter a one-circle fight ... is the eagle an energy fighter NOW?

 

You can very generally think of the tactics to use against another aircraft in terms of energy vs angles fighter, but the facts is that the tactics you end up using DEPEND on what everyone in the fight is doing.

 

Forget all this internet stuff, go straight to the very basic BFM training taught by the USN.

 

No, it isn't complete and it doesn't tell you everything - and you really want to have an instructor come with it. But it's a whole lot better than many other things out there.

 

http://www.cnatra.navy.mil/pubs/folder5/t45/p-1289.pdf

 

Thanks. I will start reviewing that pdf tonight.

[Stuge]

Rmin is pretty short, and if you fly to within 5nm of someone carrying a slammer or R-77 without having your own weapons in flight, you should be smokin' bbq. .

 

Not if there's a hill inbetween ;)

 

I was not suggesting that openly engaging an enemy at 5 nm that is shooting back is necessarily a good idea, it's a risk for sure, but that it can be done.

 

If you want minimal risk, only get into one engagement, and rtb full speed :D

 

It's about what is acceptable risk level for you.

 

On the other hand, careful pilots get shot down just as well as the crazier ones...

[Stuge]

On F15 and energy: if you happen to be turning horizontally at 400-450kts with full afterburner, the thing really likes to overaccelerate if you loosen your joystick pull even a little, causing imminent loss in turn rate and/or blackout. This extra energy is best converted into altitude immediately(by tilting the turn a bit towards the sky), lowering airspeed into acceptable range while gaining altitude, giving you advantage. The other option is cutting the throttle or even braking, and this obviously makes you lose energy and give advantage to the bandit.

[lunaticfringe]

This extra energy is best converted into altitude immediately(by tilting the turn a bit towards the sky), lowering airspeed into acceptable range while gaining altitude, giving you advantage. The other option is cutting the throttle or even braking, and this obviously makes you lose energy and give advantage to the bandit.

 

The more oblique the turn, the smaller amount of net energy required to negotiate change in cardinal direction; case in point- turns in the region between 15 and 30 degrees of pitch require approximately 20% less energy, whereas turns 60 degrees of pitch and higher discount your energy spent by *half*. Further (and quite possibly more important in the asymmetric fight) the turn radius compared to the fighter maneuvering essentially in the horizontal is substantially foreshortened. That is, you can exist *inside* his turn circle.

 

To do so requires then that the bandit do one of two things- get oblique to meet you (and enter into a regime in which he's not necessarily suited) in an attempt to make weapon parameters, or attempt to redefine the center of his own circle through a reduction in his turn rate, up to a possible extension, before beginning his turn again; meaning, of course, you just got an opening.

 

The challenge with energy tactics in a simulator is found in two key areas-

 

1. Visual feedback; it's more difficult to spot an aircraft on a screen, even a combination of screens or a huge projection, than it is in real life. What's more, you can't see many of the "tells" accurately, even if you *can* detect him- lack of wing flex, improper lighting damaging the ability to see aspect, etc. One must get very good at monitoring the vortexes to pick up for some of this lost information.

 

2. Patience; because you're not getting all of the data, it's very easy to get impatient, pull too hard, not vector roll in the right amount of lag or lead, and thus not get the required separation and angles desired from each successive pass.

 

Practice. You've got to have a feel for stick and rudder position with your head turned away from the nose, watching the bandit. The relative horizon doesn't help consistently, because it changes as you roll. You need to be comfortable looking away from the HUD on a consistent basis 95+% of the time and driving the aircraft competently.

[GGTharos]

Yes Stuge, but not my point. What if it comes down the hill and there is no hill for you to hide behind? In fact you don't even have enough time to get into a notch.

 

My point is, right now you can do ridiculous missile evasions. I don't know if it will be corrected, but it really gives people a skewed view of BVR, how missiles work, and how missile evasion works. These things are really quite capable, and because of the way the game works, using realistic tactics does not work as well as it ought to - at least against those who have figured out how to game the game.

 

(Incidentally, just a short aside, SLAMRAAM is one of those systems that won't care if you try to hide behind a hill ... :D )

 

Not if there's a hill inbetween ;)

[Skall]

Thanks for the tips Stuge and lunaticfringe.

 

Spent some time with GG's pdf last night. The training scenarios are setup in such a way that it is impossible to leverage the AI to practice them in any meaningful way. Such is life.

 

I also spent some time on the art of the kill thread and read through the pdf posted there. While more basic, I think it lends itself to practicing the bare bones basic against the AI a little better. Gonna give it a shot today.

[TAW_Blaze]

On the other hand, careful pilots get shot down just as well as the crazier ones...

 

Except that they get their ass kicked a /lot/ more frequently.

[GGTharos]

The training scenarios are setup in such a way that it is impossible to leverage the AI to practice them in any meaningful way. Such is life.

 

The key is to read the setups, why they are set up the way they are, and what the designated learning objectives are.

 

I also spent some time on the art of the kill thread and read through the pdf posted there. While more basic, I think it lends itself to practicing the bare bones basic against the AI a little better. Gonna give it a shot today.

Practice with the AI might teach you some basics, if you know what the basics are. But only a limited amount of that. Since you cannot control what the AI can or cannot do, you can't really practice a particular scenario/drill, or vary it.

[Skall]

The key is to read the setups, why they are set up the way they are, and what the designated learning objectives are.

 

Practice with the AI might teach you some basics, if you know what the basics are. But only a limited amount of that. Since you cannot control what the AI can or cannot do, you can't really practice a particular scenario/drill, or vary it.

 

Aye agreed. But I actually like the predictability of the AI at this stage of learning as bad or good outcomes are easily repeatable. Allows for easy experimentation.

 

Ultimately I know I'll have to get some help online if I want to go past the bare basics. Too bad none of my friends are into flight sims :cry:. Would love to have a practice partner.

[Ktulu2]

There are servers for noobs, so try finding a place were people are at your level first, after go on the big servers (where skills are mixed, from not understanding rwr to «get pownded kid»).

[Bushmanni]

Public servers are bad for learning BFM as what you need is to repeat over and over the practice scenarios 1vs1 with minimal time spent setting up the fight. You might find someone there to train with though. Build a simple MP mission in editor with the planes already at correct starting positions and host your own server.

[USARStarkey]

Another article that likes to start on the wrong foot. Energy fighters WILL do horizontal turns as/when necessary. Why get complicated if you do not have to? Angles fighting is not to be avoided - it is present in all air to air combat where the bandit is not right on your dead 12 flying straight and level. Energy fighting is there to add another dimension to pure angles fighting - simply put, a pilot that is good at energy fighting is a better pilot. The biggest bunch of BS is that if you're in an 'energy fighter' you must 'energy fight'. Not the case. If your plane is so horrible at turning (eg: F-104) but good at doing one-pass, haul-you-know-what, you're not going to turn with the other guy, and you can't employ energy tactics.

 

What's an energy fighter? An F-15? Why? It can out-turn a MiG-21 and out-climb it, so is it an angles fighter now? How about a Su-27? The eagle turns a bit worse at slower speeds, but it out-climbs the flanker at medium to high altitudes. Is it an energy fighter now?

 

Ok, how about if a flanker comes zooming in at M1.2 and the Eagle is flying happy at 0.9, they enter a one-circle fight ... is the eagle an energy fighter NOW?

 

You can very generally think of the tactics to use against another aircraft in terms of energy vs angles fighter, but the facts is that the tactics you end up using DEPEND on what everyone in the fight is doing.

 

Forget all this internet stuff, go straight to the very basic BFM training taught by the USN.

 

No, it isn't complete and it doesn't tell you everything - and you really want to have an instructor come with it. But it's a whole lot better than many other things out there.

 

http://www.cnatra.navy.mil/pubs/folder5/t45/p-1289.pdf

 

Just one correction, I agree with everything else. A Eagle will out climb a Flanker at ANY altitude.