Top Gun (1986): Locking On & War

Factual Questions
1

I’m still watching older movies. So at the start of the original Top Gun the US pilots in their F-14s engage a couple of Soviet “MiGs” (not really). Tom Cruise’s Maverick locks onto one of the “MiGs” and the Soviet pilot disengages and leaves the area. The other Soviet plane then locks onto Cougar’s F-14. Maverick then does his inverted flight over the guy and scares him off.

So a couple of questions:

  1. This is Cold War era. Are there any cases of US/Soviet aircraft engaging each other to the degree of locking on their missiles? It seems to me that this is a very aggressive move that could, you know, accidentally start a shooting war.

  2. Maverick locks on first. Would he be in trouble for this? Not that his character cares about the rules, but just wondering.

  3. When the “MiG” locks onto Cougar, Maverick engages in aerial acrobatics to scare off the pilot. This of course greatly endangers Cougar if the Soviet pilot had in fact fired. Would he get in trouble for this? Not for the inverted flight, but for not actually engaging an aircraft that has a US aircraft locked on.

2

Top Gun exists in an alternate reality where the United States is at war a “MiG-28” equipped Sri Lanka, Tom Cruise gets sent to TOPGUN after committing numerous violations of the UCMJ where he is trained in the art of aerial combat by a sexy astrophysicist, and a pilot can somehow fly an F-14 in a “4g inverted dive” in level flight. I mean, pretty much anything can happen in this universe, even things that the Warner Bros. would object to as being totally unrealistic.

Stranger

3

That made me laugh quite a bit. :slight_smile:

4

To answer question 1, at the beginning of the Cold War but prior to the missile era there was actual combat between US and Soviet aircraft in two different circumstances. Prior to the much, much better-known U-2 incident of 1960 where Gary Powers was shot down by a Soviet Surface to Air Missile, over 200 US aircrew were killed or captured after being shot down in or near Soviet airspace in a number of incidents. These were classified and information didn’t start to come out until after the fall of the Soviet Union. In the other circumstance, Soviet ‘volunteer’ pilots flew MiG-15s during the Korean War and both shot down and were shot down by US aircraft.

The mock and later actual fighting in Top Gun was based on the 1981 Gulf of Sidra incident and prior mock attacks by Libyan aircraft against the US Navy conducting patrols inside what Gaddafi declared was the “The Line of Death” that he considered to be Libyan territorial waters. In this (1981) incident all the missiles fired by both sides were IR seekers, Libyan AA-2 Atolls and US AIM-9L Sidewinders, so radar locking wasn’t an issue in the actual aerial combat, but radar locking appears to have occurred frequently in the earlier encounters:

Early in the morning of 18 August, when the U.S. exercise began, at least three MiG-25 ‘Foxbats’ approached the U.S. carrier groups, and were escorted away by American interceptors. The Libyans tried to establish the exact location of the U.S. naval force. Thirty-five pairs of MiG-23 ‘Floggers’, MiG-25s, Sukhoi Su-20 ‘Fitter-Cs’, Su-22M ‘Fitter-Js’ and Mirage F1s flew into the area, and were soon intercepted by seven pairs of F-14s and F-4s.[14][16] U.S. Naval Intelligence later assessed that a MiG-25 may have fired a missile from 18 miles (29 km) away at U.S. fighter aircraft that day.[17]

In a later incident in the Gulf of Sidra in 1989, so after Top Gun was released, another pair of Libyan aircraft were shot down, this time with both radar guided AIM-7 Sparrows and IR AIM-9L Sidewinders, so both radar locking and actual engagement with radar guided missiles occurred.

At 11:58, the F-14s made a left turn, away from the MiG-23s, to initiate a standard intercept.[12][1][13] Seven seconds later, the MiG-23s turned back into the American fighters for another head-on approach and were descending in altitude.[12] At this point, the F-14 aircrews began employing tactics to reduce the effectiveness of the MiG-23s’ radars and the 12-mile-range (19 km) AA-7 Apex missiles they were potentially carrying.[11][10] The American aircraft started descending from 20,000 to 3,000 feet (6,100 to 910 m) to fly lower than the Libyan fighters. The drop in altitude was meant to prevent the MiG-23s from detecting the F-14s by using ocean clutter to confuse their onboard radars.[11] The American pilots executed another left turn away from the Libyan aircraft during the descent. Moments after the F-14s created a 30-degree offset, the MiG-23s turned to place themselves back into a collision course and accelerated to 500 knots (930 km/h; 580 mph).[12]

The air warfare commander on the Kennedy gave the American aircrews the authority to fire if they believed the MiG-23s were hostile.[13][8] The F-14s turned away from the approaching MiG-23s two more times, and each time, the American aircrews saw the Libyan aircraft turn back toward them for a head-on approach. At 12:00:53, the Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the lead F-14, Commander Leo Enwright in Gypsy 207, ordered the arming of the AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles on the American fighters, after what he determined was the fifth time the Libyan aircraft turned back toward them.[12]

The American aircrews armed their weapons when the opposing aircraft were less than 20 miles (32 km) away, the two groups closing in on each other at a rate of 1,000 knots (1,900 km/h; 1,200 mph).[1] At a distance of about 14 nautical miles (26 km), the lead F-14 pilot, Commander Joseph Connelly, made a radio call to the carrier group’s air warfare commander to see if there was any additional information in regard to the MiG-23s.[13][8] There was no response to his call. At 12:01:20 and at a range of 12 nautical miles (22 km), Enwright fired an AIM-7, surprising Connelly, who did not expect to see a missile accelerate away from their aircraft. The missile failed to track toward its target. At a distance of about 10 nautical miles (19 kilometres), Enwright launched a second AIM-7, but it also failed to hit its target.[1]

The MiG-23s continued to fly directly toward the American fighters at 550 knots (1,020 km/h; 630 mph).[12] The F-14s executed a defensive split, where both aircraft made turns in opposite directions. Both Libyan fighters turned left to pursue the second F-14, Gypsy 202.[1] Connelly prepared Gypsy 207 for a right turn to get behind the MiG-23s as they went after the other American fighter.[8] With the MiG-23s pointed directly at them, the crew of Gypsy 202 fired a third AIM-7 from roughly five miles (8.0 km) away and downed one of the Libyan aircraft.[12]

After executing a sharp right turn, Gypsy 207 gained a position in the rear quadrant of the remaining MiG-23.[1] As the Libyan fighter was turning left and from a distance of one and a half miles (2.4 km), Connelly fired an AIM-9 missile, which downed its target.[12][8] The second MiG-23 was hit by the AIM-9 at 12:02:36. The F-14s descended to an altitude of several hundred feet and returned at high speed to the carrier group.[1] The Libyan pilots were both seen to successfully eject and parachute into the sea, but it is not known whether the Libyan Air Force was able to successfully recover them.[1][14]

5

Wow. Thanks so much for that! I wish there was an upvote. :slight_smile: That’s really interesting!

6

In these posturing situations, applying a radar lock is a definitely provocative move not to be taken lightly or inadvertantly. At the same time, a bit like audibly cocking your revolver or racking the first shell into your shotgun when you hear an intruder in your living room at 2am, it’s an unmistakable signal of intent and the probable capability to back up that intent.

It is one of the few real-world ways for armed ships or aircraft to send an unmistakable but not yet violent message to the opposition. This is true whether it’s air-to-air, ship-to-air, or air-to-ship. Being lit up with search radar is one thing; being lit up with targeting radar is quite another. Even if the weapon you intend to employ doesn’t need a radar lock, it’s still a clear “I’m serious here” message that is often well worth sending at the right time.

Whether you think you’re the offender or defender in the larger scenario and whether the other side has the mirror image understanding matters a lot in what happens next. When both sides think the other guy is the offender and they are the defender, well … that’s how people accidentally start gunfights or military skirmishes.


So much for generalities.
As to the set-up in Maverick, it depends entirely on the Rules of Engagement of the day.

As a general matter, the right to self-defense is rarely withheld. Which generally translates to the field forces being allowed to respond in kind tit-for-tat, but not to escalate. They lock, you can lock. They maneuver, you can maneuver. They fire, you can fire.

As a practical matter, that is pretty scant comfort out at the pointy end of the spear. Needing to absorb the enemy’s first fire is not a smart way to fight. It is a great way to become a paragraph in the subsequent wiki entry on how this particular war started and who was the first casualty.

In the real world Gulf of Sidra incident the US pilots were pleading with whoever was in charge back at the carrier to let them fire before the tactical picture got too dire. They did get clearance late then successfully made the best of a bad setup. The fact they had better airplanes, weapons, and training certainly helped them pick up the pieces from that bad setup. The audio and some video footage of the real event is available on YouTube. It’s not real edifying to laymen, but the stress in the voices and the rapidly escalating pace is plenty clear.

7

How can you tell the difference?

8

When searching or scanning a radar is looking at a wide area of space, and to an aircraft this appears as being hit intermittently by a pulse of radar energy. While tracking or targeting, the radar is directing energy continuously onto the plane that it is locking on, and this appears on the targeted aircraft’s radar warning receiver as just that; being hit by a constant stream of radar energy. The F-14’s radar was actually one of the first airborne radars capable of doing both simultaneously, something known as TWS, Track While Scan. As the wiki article on TWS explains it:

The introduction of semi-active radar homing missiles made the lock-on concept especially important. These missiles use the launching aircraft’s own radar to “paint” the target with a radar signal, the missile listens for the signal being reflected off the target to home in on. This requires the radar to be locked on in order to provide a steady guidance signal. The drawback is that once the radar is set to tracking a single target, the operator loses information about any other targets. This is the problem that track while scan is meant to address.

In traditional radar systems, the display is purely electrical; signals from the radar dish are amplified and sent directly to an oscilloscope for display. There is a one-to-one correspondence between “blips” on the display and a radio signal being received from the antenna. When the antenna is not pointed in a particular direction, the signal from any targets in that direction simply disappear. To improve the operator’s ability to read the display, the oscilloscopes typically used a slowly fading phosphor as a crude form of “memory”.
…
It was not until the introduction of digital computers, and especially microprocessors, that TWS in airborne applications became practical. Development of TWS generally followed the development of the microprocessors that eventually powered them; the AN/AWG-9 of the F-14 Tomcat used an Intel 8080 and could track 24 targets.

9

Back in the dark ages the helicopter I flew in (OH-58C) was pretty low tech. A couple of them did have radar detectors in them. One day in Germany we were flying around an area we were allowed to do low level flying in. A F-16 was in the area and started playing with us. We tried to hide. He tried to paint us with radar. We could tell when the modes changed by the sound of the detector. The details are lost in 30 years of memory but I do remember we had a lot of fun that day. I would hope that jet fighters of the time had more sophisticated detectors than we had.

10

The details would be classified, but part of it would be continuous versus intermittent radar contact.

The classified part would be that in different modes, the radar signal itself is modulated with a code pattern to highlight to a missile that “this is your target”. The code pattern and related characteristics is why militaries gather electronic signals intelligence.

This information is programmed into radar threat warning receiver systems so that an aircraft under threat can monitor its threat state.

11

Yeah. The typical radar warning receiver (“RWR”) can determine the signal type, rough azimuth and rough range of everything it hears. And display that on a small scope as well as provide various noises of varying urgency into your headset.

For things like ships or land-based SAMs, the search radar is a whole separate device with separate antennas from the targeting radar. The RF frequency, pulse width and spacing, etc., is all quite different between the two since they have very different missions. An AWACS type aircraft is pure search, but again the RF “signature” is distinct.

For fighters, there’s only room for one radar system feeding one antenna. But it’s still the case that a fighter’s searching and tracking modes “sound” different from the target’s POV.

More modern radars of all types are vastly more subtle about how they track. Precisely to make it harder for targets to know the difference, or even know they’re being detected at all. The TWS mentioned by @Dissonance above was the first move in that direction. We’d come some ways past that when I was doing this stuff 30+ years ago(!). Much less whatever techno-magic goes on today.

The increasing use of smarter missiles also means in many cases the shooter only needs to lob the missile into the general area of the target. For which a mere search-quality track is good enough. As the missile nears where it expects the target to be, it’ll start its own autonomous radar search. That difference too can in principle be detected by the target, but probably too late to do much except flinch uselessly.

Plus of course a radar can be used to initially point an IR-, RF-, or video-guided missile at the target, have the missile acquire its own passive “lock-on” to the target, launch, then direct the radar completely away while the missile does its passive tracking with no emissions whatsoever.

The cat and mouse game of sneakier radars and smarter detectors goes on continuously. I can’t hazard a guess at the state of the art on either side. Although in any skirmish, there’s no assurance both sides have the latest toys. Against, e.g. the Libyans in the Gulf of Sidra in 1981, the opposite was rather more guaranteed.

12

Or, perhaps, deploy countermeasures.

Which is another big error that happens in these movies. They often show aircraft deploying flares (because it’s more cinematic than chaff or other RF countermeasures) against missiles that are otherwise indicated as being radar-guided.

Also, to add to a previous comment, often the “Missile Launch” signal that actually guides the missile to the target is distinct from the “Target Tracking” signal. So you may get an escalation in urgency from Search to Track to Launch in more modern systems.

There are many, many different possibilities out there, and the cat-and-mouse game of counter- and counter-counter-measures is endless.

13

Agree completely about movies showing decoy flares being deployed against what might be radar missiles. Which would be useless as you say.

But at the ranges involved in a visual fight like the real Gulf of Sidra and the original Top Gun movie, typically you’re using your IR missiles, not radar guided. Nevertheless, it’s common and generally desirable to take a radar lock before firing an IR missile. Why?

  1. That determines the range to the target and gives cues in the HUD about whether you’re in range or not. Range on missiles is a dynamic value which depends a LOT on the relative speed & direction of the two aircraft, the altitude, etc. It’s not as simple as e.g. “Min range is 500 feet, max range is 2.5 miles”.

  2. Generally an IR missile still on the rail is “looking” straight ahead. And will only see and seek an IR source directly ahead. Which requires the shooter to point their airplane exactly at the target plus/minus just a couple of degrees and keep pointing that way long enough for the missile to see the target and signal the airplane of that fact, the pilot to process that fact, the pilot to trigger the missile, and have it actually leave the launch rail. So 2-4 seconds total, maybe longer if the background is unfavorable. Only then can the shooter maneuver away.

    Further, it’s a good bet the target is maneuvering the whole time. If at any point in the see → decide → shoot → missile-away process the target slips out of dead ahead, odds are the missile will lose the target and be wasted. So holding the target centered dead ahead is both difficult and absolutely essential for the shooter.

    Conversely, with a radar lock, the IR missile can be “slaved” to the radar’s line of sight to the target. Now the target tracking problem is easy(er); just keep the target generally within maybe 45-60 degrees of your nose, let the radar chase the target’s exact bearing within that cone, and wait for the missile following the radar’s line of sight to signal it sees the target. Then fire.

    In effect it’s the difference between needing to aim with a scoped rifle and being able to aim with a very wide-pattern shotgun. The latter is much easier versus a rapidly maneuvering target.

The downside to taking a lock is the whole topic of this thread. You’re telling the target they’re about to get shot. But once you’re in a visual dogfight that’s already patently obvious. Not locking is great when you’re sneaking up on somebody unawares and intend to simply shoot them without warning. Which is great in a full-bore war, but not so good in one of these peacetime threat / counter-threat skirmishes.

The other point for Top Gun is that fiddling with the radar first is a great story telling device to build suspense and to stretch out the scene.

14

For fun, the YouTuber LegalEagle did a video on some of the legal problems the film glosses over (and there are several):

15

Thanks, I enjoyed that video. I’ve wondered for years how much trouble Maverick would in for his fly-bys, and that answered it for me.

16

I thought this would be of interest, it’s a 15-minute short documentary on the 1989 Gulf of Sidra Incident that includes the actual audio recording from the lead F-14, Gypsy 207 and a good analysis of the engagement, the rules of engagement the US pilots were under, and theories of what the MiG-23s might have been up to based on transcripts of intercepted radio communications between them and their ground controller released many years after the fact. Apparently the MiGs never turned on their fire control radars.

At about 6:00 you can hear the Radar Intercept Officer calling the distance to target - “13 miles” followed by his call of “Fox-1! Fox-1!” indicating that he has fired an AIM-7 Sparrow radar guided missile and the surprise in the voice of the pilot of “Ah Jesus” on hearing this.

Weird timing on the video, it was just uploaded to YouTube on a new channel 3 or 4 hours ago; it’s on a new second channel specifically for documentaries by a YouTuber I sub to who’s main channel is pretty much entirely realistic video game dogfights in DCS, Digital Combat Simulator.

17

IANA expert on F-14s. But …

I would have believed only the pilot could have launched a missile. With the RIO’s help of course. But the final trigger-pull was a pilot-only function.

Hearing that a RIO launched a missile and the pilot of the same jet was surprised surprises me. I could certainly imagine the lead aircraft of a formation being surprised that his wingman fired both first and unexpectedly. That’s still bad, but a very different kind of bad.

18

I don’t believe this is the case. This random Quora post seems to confirm that AIM-7 could be launched by either the Pilot or the RIO: https://qr.ae/proZqF

It’s not on the trigger, but rather a Missile Launch button on the Weapons Control Panel.

Sidewinders and Guns were Pilot-only functions.

19

Cool. Learn something new every day. Thanks.

20

That’s fantastic. Thanks for this!