Is dogfighting dead?
>>62918800I think negroes and spics still arrange dogfights.
>>62918800Yeah
>>62918800No. It was only temporary. Once the first mover advantage erodes and everyone employes stealth planes BVR fights are history. This is also aided by AWACS killer missiles becoming mainstream.
>>62918800https://youtu.be/Z9j_GAUpgjw?si=CJ5oJYrUzsXyw7QH
>>62918800It has been since the Iran-Iraq war, you fucking retard.>Iraqi Miggers explode in the sky for no reason>Iranian F-14s have a laugh
>>62918800bvr only works when you are against inferior planes anything that has an rwr will pick it up and just turn cold and outrun every missile till eventually a dogfight will happen
>>62918800Mostly yes. Between BVR and Hight Offbore Shooting, any dogfight is going to be a footnote.
>>62918800YesDogfighting is the bayonet charge of the airforce
>>62919484>till eventually a dogfight will happenThis is assuming the aircraft are allowed/willing to enter an unpredictable contest such as dogfightingIf two opposing soldiers run out of ammunition on an otherwise deserted battlefield they're probably not gonna charge across the field at each other to engage in a fistfight
>>62919484Eh...probably not. Modern AESA radars have identical scan and track signals so a defending plane wouldn't knock if they're being engaged or merely observed. You could evade as soon as you see any radar but that's just running away as soon as a single F-35 shows up. Likewise, modern missiles like the current AMRAAM only use active radar for terminal guidance. By that point there's no way to dodge so the RWR does nothing.
>>62918800Yes but also no.In all the wars we have had since BVR became viable it's been relatively small numbers of planes engaging each other and in this case WVR is dead.If we did see a major air battle like US vs China then there would be so many planes that running out of BVR missiles becomes a real possibility and we could see a 30 vs 30 BVR engagement turn into a 10 vs 10 WVR engagement.Also high turn rate will always be useful for defeating incoming missiles as you need to react fast to drag them down into thick air, weave to make them bleed energy or get them on your beam quickly.
>>62919484RWR only helps if the fighter firing on you is the one locking you with their radar.Thanks to datalink you can have an AWACS painting you for hours and you have no idea it's relayed targeting data to a fighter until the fox-3 goes active and you have ~10 seconds to live.
>>62918800It's not dead. Not yet at least. But it's only going to get rarer and rarer with time.
>>62919742>Modern AESA radars have identical scan and track signals so a defending plane wouldn't knock if they're being engaged or merely observed. You could evade as soon as you see any radar but that's just running away as soon as a single F-35 shows up.>Likewise, modern missiles like the current AMRAAM only use active radar for terminal guidance. By that point there's no way to dodgeA further point: there are high supersonic (mach 4-5, not hypersonic but very significantly faster then any fighter) BVR missiles like Meteor that use ramjets to significantly expand their range and envelope vs traditional pure rocket designs. There are clear paths to continue improving those as well, and much easier then fighters, and they already have 2-way data links as well so they can get into no-escape envelope from a network of sensors.What I actually DO think might shift the balance a bit is ever improving DEWs. In the context of fighters, where the defender does have a lot of delta-v envelope to work with and can always go very fast into high altitudes where DEWs are ever more effective, and the threat (missiles) have more sprint but far less mass and far more vulnerability, on paper the physics/economics balance between high value BVR missiles and a laser shot favors the latter pretty heavily. Even using chemical lasers with a limited number of shots, can still be more efficient then a reasonable number of BVRAAMs.The most obvious counters in turn to that are large amounts of missile spam that overwhelm a reasonable DEW system, but said missiles would need to be much smaller to hold more volume in the same mass, which means getting much closer. Or else a DEW or hyper kinetic weapon powerful enough take out an opposing fighter, but that requires LOS (even if it's still BVR when the "V" bit is "human eyes") and is much more challenging. Or mass drone spam.Will be interesting to see play out anyway. Maybe we will get a Macross or Ace Combat period?
>>62919808Although I'll add having written this: I still don't think it'd bring back any TRADITIONAL form of dog fighting, of two pilots jousting through the skies trying to get behind the other guy and get a lock or get guns on them by hand. If the cat/mouse dynamic shifted back towards closer range in the modern environment that'd itself favor pure drone ASFs which could handle far more g-forces and have fully automated computer controlled turrets/micromissiles/whatever that could engage off axis just getting closer. There isn't R&D towards that right now because the current approach that makes the most since is BVR, but if DEWs went far enough to change that we'd see a new stage in the eternal arms race, not a return to the old ways, because the tech environment has changed regardless.So fun to think about but dog fighting is still dead.
>>62919845I consider anything WVR to be "dogfighting" these days, it'll be fox-2s unless shits gone real bad and they need to fall back on guns.
>>62919808By the same virtue, those DEWs could also plausibly damage or destroy fighter planes making air combat into more of a battle of airships than any dogfight.
Conventional wisdom is that, yes, dogfighting is officially a non-factor. However I can easily imagine situations in which they may happen, ie, a CVN’s air wing having to deal with swarms of PLAAF light fighters; after the dozen or so AIM-120s are expended then what? If you don’t want to run you have engage in a knife fight. Or what if you’re flying low using terrain masking and you get jumped by enemy planes who were also using terrain masking?
>>62919896>those DEWs could also plausibly damage or destroy fighter planesEh, at least not the same ones. Fighters just have far, far more delta-v/ISP and mass to work with, use high flash liquid fuel which can be (and is) used as a heat sink vs being a thin skin around solid explosives, and have way more distance. An AAM also needs to get pretty darn close to a fighter to work and be effective, the fighter it's after is itself very fast, and doesn't have the mass to spare for tons of redundant sensors and such.A big enough DEW can obviously absolutely still nail a fighter or anything else at a hundred miles, but the scale is pretty different then what you need purely for AAM defense. A fighter on defense that merely slightly blinds or damages the maneuvering capability of the missile or whatever has probably already won, missile won't be able to perform final terminal effectively and a mile miss from 100mi away is simultaneously super closer relatively speaking and worthless on an absolute scale.Scribbling, I suspect you'd need bigger planes to carry and power big long range DEWs, then you need to figure out how to protect those vs large numbers etc. Honestly I'm not sure how that'd play out long term.
>>62919948Another wrinkle is weather plays a bigger role on the offense vs defense. A fighter that knows a missile is coming in and is in clouds can get out of the clouds in a real hurry by just flying up. At max throttle you can gain ten or twenty thousand feet very fast. But if you're trying to blap a plane from a good distance and there are clouds around them staying in the clouds in an obvious counter.Actually I guess that has all sorts of interesting effects maybe? Like, aircraft trying to fight in the cloud layer, getting close, shooting missiles, ducking out of the clouds to shoot them with lasers, ducking back in before both sides stand-off lasers can nail them, could be really wild in theory. Though I'm just thinking out loud here, it'd be really interesting to game theory out but I haven't done so.
>>62919928>Or what if you’re flying low using terrain masking and you get jumped by enemy planes who were also using terrain masking?Whoever sees the opponent first will win most of the time.If both sides see each other at roughly the same time, they'll trade kills assuming equivalence in missile and counter measure tech.With frontal aspect seekers and high off boresight shooting, you don't need to chase the opponent's tail. You just point and shoot. It's more of a situation where two firing squads face each other and give each other a volley than a "dogfight".
>>62919948I'm thinking a giant flying gunship like a B-17 of lasers. A laser has a shorter range than a missile but a longer range than a gun so a fighter plane would be at a disadvantage against a bomber if both had lasers. The fighter plane's maneuverability would be entirely pointless since lasers can't be dodged at normal air combat ranges.
>>62920006>It's more of a situation where two firing squads face each other and give each other a volley than a "dogfight".Napoleonic bros we're so back
>>62918800Drones are hideously vulnerable to direct engagement and can be shot down by even the shittiest armed trainer. Dogfighting is only going to get more relevant with them.
>>62920031Yeah but if we're assuming equivalence then both sides have big airborne lasers, which can then shoot down each other, so now you're still trying to figure out how to break a standoff again. And if there is cloud cover then fighters can still go at it staying beneath the clouds, including trying to get below the flying laser platforms and spam them. Then one can imagine counters (both tech and doctrine) to that and back and forth.So yeah it'll be wild but also different. And no doubt in many cases there won't actually be equivalence, only some bigger countries will be able to operate big offensive airborne laser carriers initially anyway.
>>62919808i think bigger carrier cruise missile with efficient engine for range releasing multiple small missiles (swarm) to overwhelm DEW is possibility
Ask yourself this: Why is gun still on plane?
>>62920346SHALLNOT
>>62920346Strafing runs on ground targets.
>>62920346>doing JDAM CAS>drop everything>things are still bad for the guys on the ground>you can still help
>>62919743> relatively small numbers of planes engaging each otherim posting this just because you made me think of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F33h9-oUfDU
>>62920604Thanks anon, I didn't know about that one.Still I don't think I would call MiG-21s BRV capable.
>>62919484>he thinks his DCS knowledge is the up to date air combatDCS lives in the last century. I cringe when they talk about RWR and notching like it's gospel.
>>62920787I wish ED would fix notching, it shouldn't work at all when you are higher than the missile because it isn't speed gating terrain it isn't seeing.
>>62920834Do you have trouble with ED, son?
>>62920346Because trying to shoot down drones with missiles bigger than the drone they're shooting down is smooth-brained.
>>62920346Because the last time they tried to remove it they got their ass handed to them.
>>62921363That was like 60 years ago in the early days of missile development We may as well add sails back to ships because the engines might break down
>>62920078>Yeah but if we're assuming equivalence then both sides have big airborne lasers, which can then shoot down each other, so now you're still trying to figure out how to break a standoff again.Tautology. If we assume both sides have the same tech and all other things are equal then the result is always going to be a stalemate.
>>62919484>RWR sees a ping>your retarded ass immidiatly goes cold>enemy fighters stay at 40k ft TWS you>in the mean time the enemy bombs your ground troops.>the battle is lost an your airfield is now in arty rangecongrats
