IIRC the last time someone was foolish enough to even attempt enagagement with American fighters was Gulf War v1.0 which was a turkey shoot. Is “top gun” training an anachronism? While I’m sure it provides an outlet for fighter jocks to strut their stuff, I can’t imagine an enemy fighter getting anywhere near critical distance to be a threat anymore.
Sure the training is still relevant and useful. First off while waiting for the next war they need something to do so why not?
Second, the next enemy may not be as much of a pushover as the Iraqi airforce was.
Third, a big part of being able to kill the enemy before seeing him is the presence of AWACS. If they are not there for whatever reason more responsibility to prosecute the fight falls to the pilots and they need to be ready for whatever faces them that day.
Doesn’t the emphasis lie on stand-off weaponry nowadays? Is it possible to shoot down a modern jet fighter using the on-board cannon?
On second thought, they wouldn’t bother fitting one if it weren’t…
They went in to Korea thinking that the era of close dogfighting had finished. The early F4 Phantoms were fitted with missiles only, and didn’t have a gun. They soon found that the missiles weren’t reliable enough to be able to diregard guns as a backup. Dogfighting was still an important skill.
I suspect they’d be reluctant to make the same mistake again, even if the technology has improved to the point where they really can rely on missiles only.
You are likely thinking of Vietnam, where the F-4 saw combat. The USA went in to Korea still using P-51’s, and upgraded to the F-86 Sabre.
The answer to the OP depends on what you mean by “dogfighting.” If you mean wild turning battles, man, that was dead in about 1916. Since the dawn of aerial combat most aerial kills have been made not in dogfights, but in one plane diving at another unexpectedly and blowing it to smithereens before it had a chance to respond or even knew it was being attacked. The USAF in World War II quite deliberately avoided dogfights, since the “boom 'n zoom” method worked so much better.
If on the other hand you mean, using guns, I would suggest that Murphy’s Law dictates you should prepare your pilots for the worst possible outcomes.
Another reason to have guns on a jet is for close air support for ground troops.
Also, I don’t know for sure that the Top Gun School is only for, “Dogfighting,” in the sense you’re using the word. It also hones reflexes and the ability to think quickly, very handy skills in any situation.
It is possible, though difficult, to dodge incoming missles. Several pilots who flew over North Vietnam have told me that the trick to making the SAMs miss was to wait to the last second and dive toward the missle while turning off to one side. I guess you would get past it before it could react.
Just my $.02.
I am an aviation buff and have read credible and well-thought-out articles saying that the last of the piloted fighters are being developed now. After that, it is either an AI drone or a remore control fighter used with very sophiscated feedback mechanisms for the pilot on the ground.
I read an article about a “fighter pilot” today who lives in the Las Vegas area and “goes to fight” in the morning in Iraq using nothing but state of the art communications links combined wth a really good simulator that makes it all real on the receiving end. That is happening right now. Likewise, semi-AI drones are finding some good success in Iraq and Afghanistan and have found, targeted, and killed enemies somewhat automously.
The big problem with human fighter pilots is their inability to withstand extreme g-forces. Humans simply start to black or red-out at g-7 or above. Planes can be built to take much higher g-forces and an insanley maneuverable fighter plane with its pilot being impervious to death whether a computer chip or someone on the ground had a massive advantage.
I’ve read recently that the USAF had dogfight wargames with the Indian airforce and “lost.” Some classified electronics were supposedly turned off on the US planes, but on a level playing field…
I was thinking in terms of “bogey at 4 o’clock” kind of thing where visual contact is made and evasive action taken. AWACS allow the enemy to be obliterated long before being sighted and as Shagnasty noted, drones are taking on more and more of the dirty work. As it would be suicide to take on an American combat pilot I wondered some of the skills hadn’t become archaic and more for show but I hadn’t considered SandyHook 's point that the skills would come in handy in evading SAMs.
Yes, quite right.
The “Cope India 2004” war games were considerably more complex than that. But they still showed how fatal complacency can be.
There will always be a need to see who can bring the ugliest date to a party. :smack:
I’m not usually a conspiracy theoriest, but I could never read about Cope India without thinking that the USAF brass took a dive so they could get a larger F-22 budget.
The wonder-missile doesn’t help much when your rules of engagement require you to visually confirm that the target is a hostile aircraft.
Stated differently, what might Congress have said to Lookheed’s request for hundreds of billions in appropriations for the F-22, had our F-15s defeated the world’s best fighters?
Wouldn’t it be possible to issue “markers” that could be read from a distance to identify friendly craft?
This is all well and good, but what do we do when one of our enemies figures out a way to jam the communications links? Al Qaida might not be able to do this, but I wouldn’t put it past China or Russia to work out an effective countermeasure. It seems to me that the air force would be foolish to completely abandon manned fighters.
Military aircraft already have IFF (identification friend or foe) transponders. But you will never know what you are really shooting at untill you see it. The public doesn’t respond well when an airliner full of passengers gets accidently shot down.
Could I have a cite for this? I can’t see a way for this to be feasible. You have an unavoidable 300ms latency transmitting signals halfway across the globe and I imagine piloting fighter planes is a place where every ms counts.
Unfortunatley, I am making a (poor) transition back to my reconstructed house from a motel room after three months and I don’t know where anything is. It was in either Discover, Air and Space, National Geographic (not likely), or one of many aviation magazines that I have lying around from the past two years. Those are the only ones I had at the hotel.
Perhaps this will clear things up. The plane was not a true fighter plane. It was a modified drone with missiles and bombs. I am pretty sure that the fighter pilot worked out of a command center in the Las Vegas area. It required a ground crew to launch it and them he flew it for the day remotely where it landed back at the remote base and the ground crew refitted it. The drone has some of the best AI ever developed an’t doesn’t require split second communication to do its thing.
The military has had good success with such drones in the last few years and they are failry cheap and they don’t have the worry of a human pilot being killed.
One need only look as far as the Eurofighter for a damn fine reason to pour billions into the F-22 program.