Please settle argument

[GGTharos]

What about two countries that only have Mig-21 or similar having an engagement?

 

What about countries that have super tucanos only?

 

But that's very clearly not what the OP was asking; he was asking about air forces which do have BVR capabilities.

 

He's also relating his FC3 experience to reality which is just flat out not correct, and he's quite obviously conflating lonewolves operating in mountainous areas, carrying largely poorly behaving missiles and jumping the other guy when he appears nearby.

 

That seems to be another fantasy that all air combat must be the United States alone against vastly inferior enemies who will (in theory) be always splashed in clean, 5th gen, pure BVR glory which could never ever end up in a merge

 

The fantasy here is that you believe merges must happen. There are rules for merges, and one of them is called 'Acceptable Merge Ratio'. The other one is 'Why fight at all if you can run him out of fuel'.

In the end you go where you have to and you do what you have to do. There are plenty of tactics to avoid a merge, there are tactics to attempt to force a merge, too. Avoiding the merge is the easiest thing in the world: Turn around and speed away, keeping your distance.

 

Why on earth did they give the F-22 vectored thrust and AIM-9X with helmet sight, such a waste of resources when clearly in this fantasy dogfights won't happen. :):):) The F-22 even has a gun! Such useless excess weight! Or maybe the designers learned a lesson after Vietnam and woke up from this fantasy.

 

The lesson learned from vietnam actually is that you must learn good BFM/ACM, but most kills happened with missiles anyway. The gun is just 'nice to have' and not even all services adopted it. Even on the F-35, the gun's main purpose is air to ground.

The current AFAIK known AIM-9X kill may not have even been WVR.

A lot of people believe this fantasy that vietnam air warfare was about the gun though ;)

[Dudikoff]

The lesson learned from vietnam actually is that you must learn good BFM/ACM, but most kills happened with missiles anyway. The gun is just 'nice to have' and not even all services adopted it. Even on the F-35, the gun's main purpose is air to ground.

The current AFAIK known AIM-9X kill may not have even been WVR.

A lot of people believe this fantasy that vietnam air warfare was about the gun though ;)

 

That's true. They mostly needed the gun because the missiles had a very high minimum range and a pretty bad hit percentage because they were not tested properly nor were the pilots trained in how to employ them. The Navy quickly improved their missiles and pilot training while nor putting a gun in the Phantom like the Air Force did (nor rotating their experienced pilots out for good) and their ratio went to 6:1 in the last operation.

[Stuge]

GG, I think we understand each other :) I feel the need the exaggerate one way, and you the other. Like yin and yang, we complement each other.

 

Merges may be undesirable for the modern fighter pilot, but sometimes they are unavoidable ;)

[GGTharos]

Fair enough. Back to fighting MiG-21's with super-tucanos then :D ... wait. What?

[Sweep]

The other one is 'Why fight at all if you can run him out of fuel'.

 

Then there's the counter to that rule: 'Why run anyone out of fuel if you can enable unlimited fuel'.

 

 

Edit:

 

You're silly. Compared to the AIM-9M the R-3R has just over half the effective range, inferior turning and requires that the launching aircraft maintain radar lock until impact. Its only merits are all-aspect capability and ludicrous chaff rejection abilities, both of which you can exceed with an AIM-120C while also getting better range and fire-and-forget.

 

Yeah, I suppose you're right...The R-3R still out-accelerates a 9M (which I suppose shouldn't be all that unrealistic...except that it was doing Mach 3+ at 10,000ft...IIRC) and the CM rejection, as mentioned, is hilarious.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Sweep

[Stuge]

Fair enough. Back to fighting MiG-21's with super-tucanos then :D ... wait. What?

 

Hmm the Super Tucano can carry heatseekers, so it has a chance most certainly!

[ekg]

Slightly OT: what is merging?

 

Thanks,

 

ekg

[JINX_1391]

Slightly OT: what is merging?

 

Thanks,

 

ekg

 

Merge, merged, or the merge..when two aircraft (assuming they are in opposition of each other) are close enough together that the seemingly appear as one radar contact.

 

Otherwise a seriously close dogfight = the merge

 

Edited February 8, 2016 by JINX_1391
update post

[Nerd1000]

 

Yeah, I suppose you're right...The R-3R still out-accelerates a 9M (which I suppose shouldn't be all that unrealistic...except that it was doing Mach 3+ at 10,000ft...IIRC) and the CM rejection, as mentioned, is hilarious.

 

I'm pretty sure the top speed and acceleration were fixed when 1.5 came out.

 

To get back on topic, I can understand why merges might be a thing of the past for conventional fighters but I suspect that the same might not be true for stealth aircraft, assuming that both sides are using them. I doubt that even really advanced fighter based radars can see stealth aircraft at the kind of distances where a merge can always be prevented with BVR missiles, and even assuming you can detect the target there's no guarantee that your AIM-120 (with its much smaller radar) is going to track on a stealthy enemy.

 

Of course modern tech means that any merge that does happen isn't going to develop into a old-school dogfight. Missiles like the AIM-9X and ASRAAM make maneuvering to lock your target irrelevant because you can shoot him even if he's behind you, and they're essentially impossible to dodge or spoof with current countermeasures. It will probably come down to who can get a lock and let off a missile first.