F-15 WVR capabilities

[cool_t]

Win any knife fight....throw your jet into a flat spin just on the edge off stalling but with enough lift to maintain lead attack angles...

[Rambler91]

Imho, what could be helpful are flaps. They are very, even short-term, useful in several scenarios.. They gave you just enough boost in turning or few additional seconds of lift so you can fire your missiles... I didn't tried this on Russian fighters though..

Edited September 24, 2010 by Rambler91

[SgtPappy]

If you have to get into a dogfight, open with an AIM-9 launch - it's hard to see and the bandit might just not see it coming.

 

After the merge, if you choose 2-circle, he might eat your lunch since a flanker will out-rate you and he has that HMS to launch sooner with, so you may want to include getting shot at in your plan.

 

One circles aren't much better, but you can try to rmin him and start rolling scissors which if you play -very- carefully you can win. Flat scissors, forget it - the flanker easily wins that one.

 

In short, nail them BVR (beyond 5 nm) ;)

 

If the fight is gunzo, boom and zoom will work just fine, you must have to step on the rudder to divest the poor flanker pilot of the idea that there's such a thing as 'dodging' ;)

 

All dog fighting aside, pilots in WWII used to shoot down bandits without even really energy/fighting or gaining angles. Sometimes it was just Boom and Zoom.

 

I heard the F-15C's top speed is better than the Su-27S' by some 60 - 100 mph as a function of altitude. Suppose the situation is still one F-15C vs one Su-27S, equal E-state, no AWACS and the two fighters ended up somehow in WVR combat (but they have all their missiles available and are at ~45% fuel load).

 

If an F-15C pilot uses that extra speed in combination with a the higher TWR, can't an he/she continue to fly past the enemy (i.e. extend) at the merge rather than turn around immediately, make some type of reversal, fire, and continue to do the same until he/she gets a kill (or gets killed)? In the end the question is would the F-15 pilot be able to reverse before hit by a missile?

 

Also, I heard that the flaps in FC2 are bugged on the F-15? Not sure though if it's still like that though.

Edited September 26, 2010 by SgtPappy

[SgtPappy]

Bump ;)

[Exorcet]

All dog fighting aside, pilots in WWII used to shoot down bandits without even really energy/fighting or gaining angles. Sometimes it was just Boom and Zoom.

 

I heard the F-15C's top speed is better than the Su-27S' by some 60 - 100 mph as a function of altitude. Suppose the situation is still one F-15C vs one Su-27S, equal E-state, no AWACS and the two fighters ended up somehow in WVR combat (but they have all their missiles available and are at ~45% fuel load).

 

If an F-15C pilot uses that extra speed in combination with a the higher TWR, can't an he/she continue to fly past the enemy (i.e. extend) at the merge rather than turn around immediately, make some type of reversal, fire, and continue to do the same until he/she gets a kill (or gets killed)? In the end the question is would the F-15 pilot be able to reverse before hit by a missile?

 

Also, I heard that the flaps in FC2 are bugged on the F-15? Not sure though if it's still like that though.

 

I'd only try that with guns. It wouldn't end well with missiles. You'd end up being shot at with no option to retaliate. Winning WVR begins before the merge. Fire a missile to distract the enemy and get out of sight. Kill him before he finds you.

 

Also, F-15 flaps have been fixed for a while.

[SgtPappy]

Hm. Thus speed and climbing abilities must be used mostly to get away and get a sneaky kill BVR. That's very new to me coming from WWII flight sims, but very interesting.

 

Some of the others however have stated that an energy/E fight is indeed possible, but very difficult. I suppose maneuvering in the vertical and using old-school throttle management (like P-38 pilots almost exclusively did) could help one gain angles on the Flanker as well.

 

Or is the F-15 just so outclassed in the maneuvering department to not even attempt a vertical maneuver approach to gain angles?

[GGTharos]

A flanker will win angles against anything, unless he's sitting there at 250kt, you're already on his 3-9 or past it at corner and high-yo-yo-ing into his six or into a snapshot position (speed = rate).

 

Your first order of business: Plan to keep him high where his energy is lower than yours. This affects both climbing and sustained (but not so much instantaneous) turns.

Second order of business: Rmin Rmin Rmin! Keep him close!

Third order of business: He turns better. Do not overshoot, do not go into flat scissors. Rolling scissors is your game. Just keep him slightly below the horizon, keep forcing him to keep his nose high and pull yours HIGH if he starts to turn into you. His nose authority and high AoA capability is good, so you don't want him to slip under you and gun you. To that end, you want to use superior E to stay clean out of his gun employment zone, and by keeping him close and on your 3-9 or better yet, ahead of it, he can't do anything to you but sit there and cuss.

It's a dangerous game because if you misjudge and he pulls the nose up to you, there's no escape.

But, if you judge it right, he's going to run out that flying thing, bury the nose, and you can nose over and sit right in the elbow.

[SgtPappy]

Ah alright. Vertical rolling scissors makes sense... a combination of turning ability and E-management keeps the F-15 competitive in that maneuver.

 

By Rmin, do you mean keeping the bandit so close, missiles would be tough to use?

[GGTharos]

"I'm too close for missiles Goose, switching to guns" :D

 

Just keep in mind that in a slow fight, Rmin on the R-73 is pretty short. You need to be CLOSE.

 

 

By Rmin, do you mean keeping the bandit so close, missiles would be tough to use?

[SgtPappy]

Realizing that I had a collisions in Ace High II due to a horribly close-quarters rolling scissors battle on a regular basis, then hopefully getting upfront won't be too bad in the F-15C.

 

As far as I can tell from everyone's input, the F-15C is meant to fight BVR or, when no other option is available, very up close in a tight E-fight.

 

I now have to learn the different radar/IFF/TEWS operational procedures to learn :D

 

Thanks gents.

[GGTharos]

The F-15 is a good overall fight. It excels in BVR, and can hold its own in WVR, but the flanker is just made to out-turn everything in the world (then again, even a flanker doesn't want to be in scissors with a hornet, but that's a different story).

 

The F-15, excelling in BVR, wants to shoot most of the bandits down that way. Realize that all this revolves around a team, not an individual aircraft, so that when your 4-ship merges with 2 bandits, you've got numerical advantage.

 

It's always good to know the advantages of your aircraft in a 1v1 fight, but IMHO in a realistic setting your 1v1 skills will be largely irrelevant if you have the numbers, as long as you don't utterly suck (... same for your wingmen).

[mikoyan]

An important point in favor of the eagle is that it is a bit smaller and lighter than the flanker; the flanker has a lot of inertia on the roll and pitch so you really have to be very Smoot with the flanker. It takes more skill to use the piper on the flanker than on the eagle.

[GGTharos]

Um ... no.

[SgtPappy]

That's what I like about modern planes. Working in teams is necessary for real success.

 

However, both the Su-27 and F-15 are perfectly capable of 1 vs 1 BVR combat right (while tactics change and success rate changes with numbers of units)?

 

Su-27's got longer range missiles and the F-15's got a better radar system and active-RG AMRAAMs.

[GGTharos]

Do you want the real life answer or the FC2 answer?

 

In FC2, it has longer range missiles - the flanker that is.

 

In RL, it'd be a lucky to get a shot off before it had a 120 going pitbull on it.

[SgtPappy]

Ah gotcha. Missiles can't be easy to model.

[GGTharos]

It also has to do with quality of equipment and ECM/ECCM.

[SgtPappy]

Most of the countermeasures in this game involve flares/chaff and jammers.

 

I read in another thread, someone complaining about the Russian jammers being a problem for his F-15 BVR. How would you get rid of a jammer threat if your main strength is to fight BVR?

[GGTharos]

Um ... how do I put this ... no game models ECM/ECCM well :)

 

In general a self-protection jammer is resource-limited (power in spectrum, processing capability, instantaneous directional capability, etc).

For this reason it can only jam a small number of threats simultaneously (As you see in FC2, you turn on your jammer, it jams EVERYTHING), for example, say 2-3 per quadrant ... some small jammers, like the MiG's gardenya are limited to 2 threats. The flanker's pods will deal with 5-6 threats per hemisphere.

 

But what counts as a threat? A threat is an STT signal within lethal range (or maybe outside of it as well).

 

THAT is when a jammer will start doing its work - once a threat is detected. It won't jam search signals because that's both plain too resource hungry and useless (why jam friendly radars?)

 

So what is the Eagle's advantage here? A TWS bug is not STT. Sure, the jammer might attempt to jam that 120 later, but at this point the F-15 has the initiative.

 

As for in-game, the F-15 will burn through against targets more than 20nm away, so you should be able to use your missiles just fine.

[SgtPappy]

That must really be balls for Su-27 pilots trying to find a WVR fight...

 

I suppose that's why many believe it would be fun to have Su-27SMs simply because the planes will be more equal BVR.

[GGTharos]

As modeled in FC2 yes, in reality they would still be severely disadvantaged.

[SgtPappy]

Oh, there's no doubting that.

 

I think the last time Su-27s fought was in 2008 during the South Ossetia skirmishes. There were Su-27SMs in service at that time; I have no clue whether they've fought or not, but by this time frame F-15C and Super Hornets were entering service with AESA radar...

 

I very much would believe US planes with AESA would really give the current Su-27 some trouble.

 

Of course, Su-30's and whatnot may be issues for today's NATO birds but those planes have never even seen combat.

[vanir]

SgtPappy I was just going to mention I'm a bit like you having come from WW2 sims and I'm far more experienced using a heavily modded version of IL2 than I am with FC2.

 

I noticed you mentioned in an earlier post that energy manoeuvres weren't used in WW2 fighting and this thread was started basically wondering how to transfer the simple boom and zoom or rake and extend tactics used by, for example P-38 pilots.

 

You were wondering about use of superior speed in a similar fashion for example in F-15C versus Su-27S in WVR (I prefer the term CWC to distinguish from BVR but ad hoc WVR has become popular apparently).

 

Okay so I'm by no means any expert and hope I have all this right and don't sound like an idiot.

 

Firstly I wanted to say that you already have great energy management skills if you've been flying WW2 combat sims. Those old warbirds are literally all about energy management, the most impressive gut wrenching monster of a WW2 plane is a total slug every time you point the nose up, not one can go astronaut and actually accelerate, something like a Tempest V or a Griffon Spit just manages to slow down a little bit less on a fast climb than the next plane. Sustaining a climb in any of them is a slow march up a long, gentle hill and you might as well make a cup of tea while you're waiting or have a little nap.

 

It's just that you get accustomed to that's how you fly them all the time normally that you don't realise that just flying them around in combat at all is all about energy management. Speed is life. Altitude is speed. Always climb high, always keep your energy up, lose it in a fight and you don't get it back again and that's when a Griffon Spit gets shot down by a Hayabusa that's suddenly all over him like nobody's business.

 

All those two thousand horsepowers don't mean anything unless you've got the inertia up to where they make a difference, otherwise it's all torque and manoeuvre and much lesser beasts compete very well.

So these improved speed characteristic advantages you're talking about are really a combination of better performance and good energy management.

 

You might be surprised just how accomplished you'll be fairly quickly jumping over to FC2 simming I'd say, you might not realise some of the skills you'd have to have already learned.

 

The first giganto difference I noticed going from the virtual cockpit of WW2 birds to LOMAC jets is the climb, from right off the runway you can go nose up and accelerate at a good speed or climb like a rocket whilst casually reaching cruise speed and great height.

The latent energy and excess thrust in jet fighters is superb, it's a whole different ballgame.

 

Then I made a huge mistake.

What you do in WW2 birds is go for altitude in combat every chance you get, but in jet fighters with missiles weapons and radar sets the whole thing is backwards.

 

Jet weapons systems get beautiful locks in lookup mode and have greatly reduced performance in lookdown or against clutter. Given that isn't so extensively modelled in sims from what I understand, nevertheless the first point is technologically speaking altitude is death in modern combat where it used to mean life.

The last thing you do at convergence is climb for energy and look for targets like you might in WW2. You'll cop a missile that way as if you held up a great big neon sign saying "shoot me" and you're always better off approaching a little lower altitude than opponents for good weapons locks where this would get you killed in a WW2 merge.

 

Mostly the energy management aspect in jet fighters is coming from the fact they're all so high performing, with tremendous climb, acceleration and speed characteristics compared to ancient birds, that the margins between them come down to very specific corner speeds and performance altitudes, that relatively minor advantages in circumstance translates to very exaggerated returns where an F-15C goes from being in front of you to suddenly on your six in the blink of an eye.

 

I'd say really energy management is a lot more sweeping with WW2 aircraft and much more specific and sudden with modern jets, everything is faster, a few seconds mean kilometres rather than hundreds of metres and a good zoom climb doesn't get you 15,000ft it takes you 18 miles vertical.

 

Energy is on tap so energy management is more intellectual I think than with WW2 birds where it's more instinctive.

 

Some of the same rules still apply but I think the whole energy equation starts off very differently with jets and then there is electronic weapons systems to consider, which like nice bold targets against a clear sky background very much.

 

That was all I wanted to mention, which like I said might be of no value, and others like GGTharos are giving you excellent advice on how to actually go about and approach jet combat itself. I just wanted to say what I noticed about energy difference jumping from WW2 virtual-cockpit to a jet fighter sim.

[SgtPappy]

Vanir, I very much appreciate your post just as much as GGTharos' posts and the others' input. It gave me a good new look on how I analyze modern aircraft.

 

Aces High II and Il-2 were genuinely exciting WWII sims and from your post, it's easier to deduce the differences of energy management and fighting styles since then. I used to fly the Spitfire VIII most of the time which was one of the best compromises between a turn fighter and an energy fighter in WWII terms. It was great for the simple fact being able of out-turning those which I could not out-run and out-run those which I could not out-turn.

 

Now it's advanced, just as exciting and a whole lot more complicated. Extending now means being BVR and, like you mentioned, WVR or CWC means staying low.

 

I think your comment on "energy is now on tap" was a great summation to the today's fighter aircraft performance from an aerodynamic view.

[Rhen]

 

Then I made a huge mistake.

What you do in WW2 birds is go for altitude in combat every chance you get, but in jet fighters with missiles weapons and radar sets the whole thing is backwards.

 

This is one of the reasons why the lessons learned from a flawed game will translate to virtual death when a simulation that accurately models air combat arrives.

 

When the "sim" you fly models actual behavior inaccurately, the end product, the tactics used and developed because of the poor modeling of missiles, radars, ECM/ECCM - active and passive, become just as unrealistic.

 

In many ways for both BVR & WVR combat, but especially for BVR combat, this game punishes many realistic tactics and rewards many tactics that would result in poor outcomes IRL.

 

Shame really.:(