Fighter planes in tight formation: What's the point?

Factual Questions
1

I work near the Portland Airport, which also houses the Air National Guard, and its squadron of F-15’s. We can see them every day flying off to do target practice on the bomb range, or training, or whatever it is they do…

Sometimes you see a pair of them taking off or landing in extremely close formation. (As I just now did, which prompted me to post this, although I’d wondered about it before.) It’s hard to say how far apart they are, but it looks like no more than about ten feet. Just now, I saw them flying in with one plane right above and slightly behind another.

My question is: why do they do this? It seems like an extrememly dangerous thing to do, so I was wondering what the benefit could be.

Some speculation I came up with…

Pros:
-Possibly deceive ground radar into mistaking two planes for one.
-Looks cool.

Cons:
-Chance of collision seems high.
-One SAM could possibly take out both planes. (Not that that’s a concern flying into a friendly airbase in Oregon, but still…)

Does anybody have the Straight Dope on this?

2

I’ve read that pilots keep to this formation to maintain eye contact and close communication. Also, fighters flying escort need to stay close to their bombers and each other to be effective. However, i’mno expert.

However, I agree that there might be a large “show-off” factor here, as it’s the best pilots who can fly closest together.

3

Yes, Nametag, I forgot to mention that I’d also speculated about the possibility that they do it so they can exchange hand signals and such, if they needed to maintain radio silence. But in the case I mentioned above, the one plane was directly above the other, so they pilots couldn’t see each other.

And yes, you need to stay close for escort duty, but not that close. They were much less than a plane-length apart.

4

It is easier to keep control of a formation than it is just letting everyone fly around as they please. The pilots actually do use hand signals when flying in close formation. Flying formation is not necessarily dangerous after the proper training. It is said that the lead pilot could fly the whole formation into a mountain, since the other pilots are looking only at the lead pilot or another plane that is following the lead plane.

5

There a few different things going on here.

One, they often take off in pairs, because runways big enough for airliners or cargo planes are generally wide enough for two side-by-side fighters. Occasionally a whole squadron will take off in pairs (which I’ve seen locally at Madison, WI’s Air National Guard site at the Dane County airport). Under a real emergency, getting everyone airborn absolutely as fast as possible may mean the difference between life and death. The worst thing for a plane is to be on the ground during an attack. So they train for this.

They are also trained to fly and fight as pairs, as wingmen. This means they stay as close as possible. Under radio blackout, they would fly so they could exchange hand signals, abreast of each other. In a threatening environment, they spread further apart so sudden maneuvering won’t lead to a collision.

They also fly in close formation for “proficiency”. They are trained to be VERY PRECISE in their maneuvering, and close formation encourages (requires, in fact) precision.

I believe it is also correct that it is difficult for radar to determine the number of planes in a tightly packed formation, but that’s just from some techno-thrillers I’ve read. Whether this could lead to some advantage with only two airplanes, I’m not sure.

6

I would think that fooling radar would be high on the list of reasons to fly a tight formation. I doubt any radar is discriminating enough to pick off two planes that large, that close together.

7

Just watch out for that jetwash or your Goose is cooked! :smiley:

Ugh that was bad

8

That’s true, but US military flying doctrine is known and copied around the world. Fighters and attack craft virtually ALWAYS fly in pairs. I think the only exception to this is the F-117, and the strategic bombers.

So if the large blip exhibits flight charactisics of an attack craft (higher speed, tighter tuns) rather than a transport or large bomber, the ASSUMPTION would be that the blip is two or more planes in formstion.

9

I don’t think dogfighting is that much of an issue with modern fighter planes, but in WWII it was, and formation flying was one of the keys.

The leader/wingman arrangement was found to be the most successful way to survive in combat. The leader attacks, while the wingman watches their back. The wingman follows no matter what, which is why you sometimes hear stories about wingmen following their leader into a mountain or into the ground.

Early in WWII, the British were big on large formations of fighters. The leader would scan the sky and direct the formation to attack. This turned out to be none to bright, because the planes at the rear of the formation tended to get jumped. Also, they spent a lot of time regrouping when they got spread out. This led to the leader/wingman idea.

10

They also spent a lot of time forming up in the first place, and they missed several interceptions during the Battle of Britain because of it. There was a quite famous debate at the time between the head of Fighter Command, Dowding, who used small groups of fighters as they became available, and one of the wing commanders, Leigh-Mallory, who wanted to form up into “Big Wings” before going after the enemy.

Dowding was right, according to what I’ve read, but he lost the political battle. The man who won the battle was shortly thereafter shuffled off to obscurity, while Leigh Mallory eventually took his position, if I recall correctly.

11

It has little or nothing to do with radar spoofing (any decent military radar - especially missile guidance radar - will be able to tell if its one plane or two. *Top Gun[i/i] is full of crap…)or showing off (strongly frowned upon - those F-15s cost $30 million a copy). It has everything to do with maintaining proficiency in formation flying for when (if) it is needed in combat - if you can fly a few yards apart in peacetime, you have a better chance of protecting each other in a war.

Each of those pilots has an assigned half of the sky that he eyeballs along with watching his radar and trusting AWACS to find potential bad guys - that way, even if radar misses it, a hostile aircraft has less chance of sneaking up on them. They tend to fly a little farther away from each other when they’re not landing or taking off, but they do tuck in pretty close near the runway.

Now, excuse me as I climb up onto my soapbox…

Dogfighting, while not the most likely combat situation they could face, is still an important aspect of air-to-air combat. The demise of the dogfight has been predicted with every new advance in aircraft design since the first world war ended.

In the 1930’s, it was assumed that with fighter planes flying over 300mph, there was no way they’d be able to turn with each other. The dogfight was a thing of the past, right? Ask Chuck Yeager, or Ralph Parr, or Bud Anderson, or any surviving ace about that theory…

When the first jet fighters were put in service in the 1950’s, the planes were flying well over 500mph, so trying to dogfight would obviously smear the pilot to jelly, according to the popular opinion of the time. The dogfight was a thing of the past, right? Still wrong. Ralph Parr has a great story about cornering 16 MiG-15s single-handedly over the Yalu river…and dogfighting for his life while shooting three of them down.

In the 1960’s, the air-to-air missile made dogfighting a thing of the past - radar guided missiles made beyond-visual-range kills possible, and heat-seeking missiles were effective up to 5 miles away. No way would a hostile aircraft get close enough for a dogfight. Navy and Air Force pilots were forbidden to practice dogfighting each other. The F-4 Phantom entered service with no gun installed - obviously the missiles would make a gun unneccesary. The first US Navy aces of the VietNam conflict, Randall “Duke” Cunningham and Willie Driscoll, made their third, fourth and fifth kills during a wild dogfight, well below the minimum range of their missiles for much of the fight. So much for the death of the dogfight. Starting with the “D” model, the F-4 Phantom was equipped with a gun - and earlier model Phantoms were given an external gun pod to make up for their deficiency.

Now we live in the age of stealth technology and even more advanced fire-and-forget missiles like the AIM-120, to be carried by low-observable aircraft like the Air Force’s F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter. Some question why a gun has been included in these advanced fighter designs, insisting that the day of the dogfight is over, and air-to-air combat will be carried out at long range only. What do you think the chances of this being true are?

12

Another issue is fuel use during long trips. To reduce the need for fuel, aircraft should fly wingtip to wingtip in diagonal formation. That’s also why migrating geese do it. The physics isn’t so complex: the larger the wing, the less energy it takes to keep a certain weight aloft. Several planes adjacent to each other act like one longer wing. Rather than two regions of downwash with four separate tip-vortices, you instead get one larger, gentler region of downwash with only two tip-vortices.

13

I know nothing about fighter tactics, but I have some acquaintance with flying in formation. Flying close to the leader does not save fuel. The followers in my experience use more fuel that the leader. The reason? The leader just sets his throttle and RPM and flys. The wingmen in close formations have to make adjustments to power settings and make small corrective maneuvers in order to stay close. This constant jockeying wastes energy which translates into increased fuel use. In addition, flying an extremely close formation for long periods of time is tiring. A bomber formation generally loosened up enroute, closed up if fighter attack was at hand and on the bomb run. I just don’t believe it is possible for the average pilot to maintain a formation so close that all the wings act as one wing for long periods of time, and maybe not at all.

I also doubt the business about the geese. Many birds migrate and many of them migrate much further than geese and ducks. Most of them don’t fly in a vee formation. I think that geese and ducks fly that way because of a genetic quirk and the formation offers no advantage in energy saving.

14

I buy the idea that it’s simply the best way to manage a collection of aircraft that have to share the same airspace.

If the aircraft don’t have visual contact, then they need a LOT of separation. Like, thousands of feet. By setting up a formation and giving each pilot a reference to focus on, it allows them to stay in visual contact with each other even in poor visibility conditions.

Having flown in formation and in very loose formation with other planes, I can see the advantages of tight formation.

Another thing is that the navigation burden goes down for the other pilots, who merely need to follow their lead.

15

The heavy high wing loaded fast flying aircraft is the easiest to keep in tight formation. So say the jocks I know. The T-34 Mentor by Beech and the Globe Swift are the only aircraft I have extensive formation time in. The leader has it the easiest flying but worries and navigates the most. The “Thunderbirds” IIRC did fly into the ground following their lead some years back. The only one who done wrong was the lead.

I have flown with overlapped wing IE my wing tip at the same level as the leads and within a few feet of his fuselage. My propeller was a bit in front of his wing tip. Smooth air and a ice for blood lead are required. Largest formation was 32 T-34’s in right echelon at Oshkosh some years ago. The formation was undoable in any real sense so it was broken into 2 flights and we made our passes that way. To big a spread in ability and the whole thing was a dust up.

Have tried formation in Cessna 150’s and that is tough in anything less than dead smooth air. We were high time pipeline patrol pilots and all had formation time.

One thing we were proud of was that we were the only civilians who were routinely allowed formation takeoffs from our airport. The military birds were the only others… :slight_smile: :::: puffing out chest ::::

Just like marching, formations are the best way to control large groups when less than perfect communication is the norm. Combat is even more so as has already been noted.

NEVER fly formation with someone you don’t know and NEVER if you have not been trained and a through briefing has not been done before flight.

I survived my bad judgement to become an old pilot.

Qualifications for my opinions is in part, my in excess of 36 million seconds in the air as PIC.

16

One other advantage not yet mentioned that close formation flying provides is the practice in close, precision flight needed for air-to-air refueling.

Besides this, IMHO the reason for doing it is as mentioned early on in the stream: taking off in pairs makes it faster and easier to get the aircraft up in a pair to do their mission. Think about the time delay involved if they went out individually. No big deal in Oregon or wherever, but if we were talking about scrambling to intercept some bad guys…

The whole soapbox thing that Kilt Wearin’ Man gets into is another deal… Pretty much, what he says is accepted wisdom now except for the part about the F-4’s and the onboard guns. (AFAIK, the F-4D caried a gun pod, the F-4E —USAF, but not USN— had an integral gun and smaller radar, but no other F-4s had a gun.) They needed it then beacuse of Rules Of Engagement that put them at a huge disadvantage, and because what then were considered long-rande AAMs had poor reliability. The AIM-7 of today (now being replaced by the AIM-120) is a whole different thing from the AIM-7 of the 1960’s and 70’s. It performed very well in Desert Storm. But we may see a similar problem coming back again if we don’t field a helmet mounted sight like the Russians have and are selling. At one time, I heard that the authorities in the US were downplaying the need for such a thing on the grounds that the AIM-120 would supposedly keep US pilots out of the engagement range of a system that uses the helmet-mounted sight. …Which to me sounds suspiciously like what they said back in the 60’s about the AIM-7 being able to keep F-4’s out of the engagement envelope of 23 and 37mm guns on opposing fighters.

17

This is quite wrong. Military radar has a time resolution of 1 microsecond. The correlates to a discrimination resolution of about 1/12 of a mile. On military air search radars, planes in tight formation do show up as one aircraft. Any formation that covers less that 1/24 of mile is essentially impossible to distinguish from a single aircraft.