On Fri, 9 May 2008 17:08:30 -0700 (PDT), Douglas Eagleson
wrote:

On May 9, 4:57Â*pm, Dan wrote:
Douglas Eagleson wrote:

snip

The russian mig-30 that literally stops in mid

flight and recovers, is another example. A forward canard allows this.

Â* Â* The "cobra" maneuver is not a very good combat move. Do a simple
free body diagram to see what happens to acceleration and velocity
vectors. The MiG is a sitting duck throughout the maneuver and takes a
long time to recover.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

The maneuver is obviously only a technical ability. As dog fighting
goes a well planned first approach with missles always wins.


A dogfight as a rule can be forced with the lost aircraft. A sucker
aircraft and absorb/take the radar.

after this occur a true missilefree dogfight happens.

Is all this super maneuverability useful in escaping a missile lock?
Modern missiles make dogfighting skills almost irrelevant as even a
rookie can press a button and score a kill, the important factor being
to get into a good firing position first. 20 years of flight
experience and superb training isn't going to save one from a rookie
who gets lucky in getting into that position first.

Air to air missiles are fire and forget, both friendly and enemy
planes fly and maneuver too fast for any need by the attacking plane
to match the enemy turn for turn to keep a (obsolete?)beam riding
missile on target. Combat distances are as far out as possible, way
beyond any cannon range for shoot 'em up dog fighting. From the many
History channel and Discovery channel interviews with modern pilots
they all say that they want to release their bombs and missiles from
as far out as possible and get the hell out. Sticking around let
alone dogfight in a modern battlefield is a suicide wish.

All free battle has an AMERICAN superior first strike built in. If
this is lost, then what happens is a secondary senario occurs. An
litteral aircraft to aircraft and attritionloss war. When attrition
dictates a winner what happens?


So large air battle planning fails when aircraft performance only
dictates.

In an attack against a third rate power, such as one from the Muslim
countries, the overwhelming superiority of US airpower in numbers
means that whatever fighter planes the opposition has will be quickly
eliminated. Doing that doesn't require the super sophisticated super
expensive new generation of attack aircraft the US is building. So
let's get straight to the only opposition that can oppose an attack by
US airpower. That will be China.

China is too big and only the tonnage of bombs will make an
impression. For that you need numbers, both in aircraft and in their
bomb carrying capacity. A war with a giant country that can
manufacture its own weapons of near equivalent performance is one of
attrition not of technical superiority. The current design philosophy
for the F22 and F35 is emphasis on stealth and maneuverability. The
trade-off is complexity and cost. The US can no longer afford an
airforce (land and naval) that can carry on a major war. The numbers
are too few. Because of complexity the US will have a problem of
keeping them in the air in a high intensity war. Because of complexity
it losses in aircraft and men will be hard to replace. Stealth means
limited internal capacity for bombs. In other words your force makeup
is unbalanced and hardware design philosophy flawed. I have given
enough to start a debate. Your turn.

Back to my first paragraph -
"Is all this super maneuverability useful in escaping a missile lock?
Modern missiles make dogfighting skills almost irrelevant as even a
rookie can press a button and score a kill, the important factor being
to get into a good firing position first. "

If you send in a large attack force, say a 40 plane strike or even a
100 plane one, the sky will be so rich with targets that ground based
AA defenses will have a field day. How many billion dollar planes can
you afford to lose in one mission? If you send in a smaller one, say
12 planes, PLAF defenders can easily send up twice that number and
from all directions to get into that favorable firing position
advantage. Even if every US plane has an ace-in-a-day there will
still be enough PLAF planes left. How many aces can you afford to
lose? Chinese fighters are cheap. Their pilots are mindless
peasants. But they are just as nasty and you already know about
China's manufacturing capabilities and manpower resources.