Trends in Air-Air Combat

[Emu]

CSBA Trends in Air-To-Air Report

 

TRENDS IN AIR-TO-AIR COMBAT IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE AIR SUPERIORITY

18 Feb 2015 JOHN STILLION CSBA

 

"Executive Summary

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) conducted a historical analysis of trends in air-to-air combat, evaluating air combat operations over the past century. The goal of this study was to assess how advances in sensor, weapon, and communication technologies have changed air combat and the implication of these trends for future combat aircraft designs and operational concepts.

 

The overall conclusion of this study was that over the past few decades, advances in electronic sensors, communications technology, and guided weapons may have fundamentally transformed the nature of air combat. Air-to-air combat developed rapidly after the operational implications of aerial reconnaissance became clear to all the major combatants early in World War I. Early aviators quickly learned the most effective techniques for achieving success in the air domain, and leading aces on both sides codified these techniques into rules and guidelines. The central purpose of these rules was to enable pilots to achieve what modern combat pilots call superior situational awareness (SA). This results when a pilot has a better understanding of the position of all relevant aircraft and their activities in the combat area than an opponent. The ultimate expression of SA is to move into position to attack an opponent without being detected, launch an attack, and escape before other enemies can take counteroffensive action.

 

For about fifty years, pilots relied on the human eye as the primary air-to-air sensor and machine guns and automatic cannon as their primary weapons. The physical limitations of human vision give it a relatively short effective range as an air-to-air sensor of about 2 nautical miles (nm). Aircraft can be seen farther away if the highly sensitive central vision is focused on them, but with central vision limited to a cone roughly 2 degrees wide, pilots searching for opposing aircraft without some sort of cue to limit their search are unlikely to detect them until the less acute peripheral vision is able to resolve them at about 2 nm. The effective range of aerial gunnery grew from about 50 meters (m) during World War I to about 500 m by the early 1960s, but pilots were still required to maneuver their aircraft in a small portion of the sky to ensure hits on an opponent. Against an un-alerted opponent, the attacker simply had to ensure he was within range and had the target “in his sight.” Against an alerted opponent, achieving hits required the attacker not only to be in range, but also to maneuver in the same plane as the target and to allow sufficient lead to account for the distance the target would travel during the bullet’s time of flight. The difficulties and time required in attaining a good firing solution against a maneuvering target, combined with the decrease in SA due to the need to fully concentrate on the target, caused many of the great aces of World War II to shun maneuvering combat as a high-risk, low-payoff activity. Instead, they strove to achieve quick surprise attacks, break away, assess the situation, and attack again if possible.

 

By the mid-1960s, new aerial weapons and sensors appeared in conflicts in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. The new weapons included both infrared (IR) and radarguided missiles, while the new sensors were largely air-to-air radars. IR missiles allowed attacks within a 30-degree cone behind the target at ranges approaching the 2 nm effective visual search radius. Radar-guided missiles, in theory, allowed attacks from any aspect (front, side, or rear) and beyond visual range (BVR). Air-to-air radars were capable of detecting and tracking targets at 15 nm or more. While the early missiles and radars had serious limitations and were unreliable, they offered substantial advantages over guns and the human eye. CSBA compiled a database of over 1,450 air-to-air victories from multiple conflicts from 1965 to the present. Advances in air-to-air sensor and weapon capabilities are illustrated in Figure 1. Guns were displaced by rear-aspect-only IR missiles, which were in turn replaced by all-aspect missiles, and finally, BVR missiles have come to make up the majority of modern air-to-air engagements.

 

These trends suggest that over the past five decades, advances in radar and other sensor technologies, missile capabilities, and communication technologies allowed pilots to search effectively much larger volumes of sky and engage targets at ever-increasing range. Most modern air combat engagements were initiated before the aircraft were within visual range with a commensurate decrease in the frequency of maneuvering combat. This means that aircrew SA is no longer primarily linked to what they can physically see through the cockpit canopy, but to what they glean from cockpit displays of sensor output and information passed from offboard sources such as nearby friendly aircraft.

 

This transformation may be steadily reducing the utility of some attributes traditionally associated with fighter aircraft (e.g., extreme speed and maneuverability) while increasing the value of attributes not usually associated with fighter aircraft (e.g., sensor and weapon payload as well as range). Aircraft performance attributes essential for success in air-to-air combat during the gun and early missile eras such as high speed, good acceleration, and maneuverability are much less useful now that aircraft can be detected and engaged from dozens of miles away. At the same time, nontraditional attributes such as minimal radar and IR signature; space, payload, and cooling capacity; power for large-aperture long-range sensors; and very-long-range weapons seem to be of increased importance. Both supersonic speed and high maneuverability place significant constraints on aircraft designers and force tradeoffs in aircraft design that limit the incorporation of many of the nontraditional, but increasingly important attributes listed above. The trends identified in this report suggest it may be appropriate to cast a much wider net in the development of future air combat operational concepts, sensors, weapons, and platforms, which would include examining “radical” departures from traditional fighter concepts that rely on enhanced sensor performance, signature control, networks to achieve superior SA, and very-long-range weapons to complete engagements before being detected or tracked by enemy aircraft....

 

...Summary and Conclusion

Since World War I, the goal of aerial combat has been to shoot down enemy aircraft without being detected and engaged. This accomplishment is usually the result of a pilot having superior SA relative to an opponent. Initially, this required attacking fighter pilots to close to very short range, often 50 m or less, either without being seen by their potential victims or being seen too late to avoid being shot down. Aces in both World Wars stressed the importance of superior SA and of surprising the enemy as well as achieving decisive results without being dragged into “low-payoff/high-risk” maneuvering fights. Many of the great aces of World War II, including Gerd Barkhorn, estimated that 80–90 percent of their victims did not realize they were under attack until after being hit. These estimates were validated by extensive USAF analysis of aerial combat during the Vietnam War. The modern embodiment of these timehonored principles is “First Look, First Shot, First Kill.”

 

By the mid-1960s, AAMs opened the possibility of achieving aerial victories without the need to close within visual range of a potential victim or the necessity of maneuvering into tight gun parameters. U.S. pilots quickly found that missiles designed to attack nonmaneuvering bombers at high altitude were much less effective than anticipated against maneuvering fighters at low altitude. These missile performance limitations were compounded by the lack of trustworthy means of positively identifying enemy aircraft BVR and the unreliability of early missile vacuum tube electronics. Despite these limitations, about 75 percent of U.S. aerial victories in Vietnam were achieved with missiles.77

 

footnote 77: "This was partly due to the lack of an internal gun in the primary U.S. air superiority fighter of the day, the F-4 Phantom II. Most of the missile kills were achieved with AIM-9 IR missiles."

Accordingly, the USAF and Navy set about addressing the challenges of employing missiles against maneuvering targets, improving missile reliability, and, perhaps most importantly, developing robust means of identifying enemy aircraft at long range to fully leverage the ongoing improvements in sensor and weapon range. These efforts bore fruit during Operation Desert Storm, where a large fraction of coalition aerial victories were achieved BVR without a single incidence of fratricide. One of the key enablers of this performance was the advent of AWACS aircraft able to track both friendly and enemy aircraft as well as assist U.S. pilots in identifying their targets and positioning themselves for BVR kills.

 

 

[Exorcet]

I don't know about speed and maneuverability being less important. They provide advantages to missiles and also allow you to react to changing situations.

[Emu]

I don't know about speed and maneuverability being less important. They provide advantages to missiles and also allow you to react to changing situations.

 

[Exorcet]

What about when you already know someone is there? Or perhaps you have someone else spotting for you while you hang back out of the range of enemy sensors?

 

That speed has potential disadvantages doesn't make it unimportant, it just makes it situational. As far as IR goes, it's also weather dependent and of course one can use terrain masking to hide from it completely (although that will usually reduce max speed because you're lower).

[Emu]

What about when you already know someone is there? Or perhaps you have someone else spotting for you while you hang back out of the range of enemy sensors?

 

That speed has potential disadvantages doesn't make it unimportant, it just makes it situational. As far as IR goes, it's also weather dependent and of course one can use terrain masking to hide from it completely (although that will usually reduce max speed because you're lower).

I broadly agree. I've made the same arguments to someone else on another forum. It's interesting though because now that we're thinking about stealth vs stealth rather than stealth vs non-stealth, there is a question over which sensor is best, radar or IRST and the answer may vary depending on the environment and sensor and EW technology levels.

 

I'm not sure terrain masking would work though since many IRST systems have A2G capability too and denser, hotter air causes more surface heating. Weather is certainly a factor though, as is Sun/Moon-masking.

[SDsc0rch]

great post! THANK you - reading it......

 

(can't rep - already done that too much apparently)

[Svend_Dellepude]

Yeah, great post.

 

@Exorcet: If you can before he can shoot at you or even better, before he knows you are there, then that might prove to be more beneficial. Even if you don't get the kill, denying the enemy to use his weapons and denying him airspace is still a win.

It is by all means much safer to drop a GBU on an aircraft sitting on the ground, than going head to head in the air.

But anyway, with the F-22's ability to supercruise and the F-35 on the way, i'd say that speed is not so far down the list.

But the ability to reach Mach 2 and beyond might not be as high a priority anymore with the development in technology and with that, change in tactics.

 

Just my thoughts..

 

My rep was for you too SDsc0rch ;)