keep in mind that missiles have to spend their energy maneuvering just like jets do. so an agile aircraft with a well-trained pilot has a pretty fair chance of evading any single missile shot at it.
and yet, many fighter pilots since they were invented around the end of WW2 have managed to dodge them. missiles don’t chase their targets, they don’t have the fuel to. they use something called proportional navigation to aim for where they believe their target will be in order to make their apparent movement disappear. a sidewinder, for example, has 15 seconds of fuel. after that, it’s a glider. if the pilot doesn’t feel like dying that particular day, and they dodge at the right time, the missile misses and lacks the speed to catch the jet.
if you want examples of how pilots use aggressive maneuvers to evade missiles, there are plenty of videos on YouTube about the subject, including some from Desert Storm that feature the F-16. or head over to the War Thunder forums, there’s plenty of nerds there who would love to spend days leaking classified military documents and info-dumping on you.
the missiles have as little as 5 seconds of fuel, make most of their attack run as gliders, and lack brains to do more than programmatically guess at where their target will decide to be. they aren’t intelligent, and don’t understand physics.
I think the confusion is that the techniques employed are to tire the missile out, not dodge them. It is possible to dodge in some cases, but, this is due to limitations in missile’s radar (and/or energy) far more than the fighter outmaneuvering something that can do 20g turns at mach 7. Thus, the maneuverability metric that originally brought on this entire conversation is not nearly as beneficial as described as they don’t need to turn on a dime, just in the right direction at the right time.
Tbh, all aerial combat should be done in open cockpit biplanes with the pilots shooting revolvers at one another. It’s supposed to be all elegant and shit like jousting in the sky, so let’s get some treaties done and live as the lord intended.
I grew up outside NYC in the 80’s and every summer my parents took me & my brother upstate to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome where they still fly vintage aircraft from the WWI era. Looking at that website it looks like they still put on their “WWI Dog Fight Spectacular” show, which is something that still makes me smile.
Fighters don’t dogfight anymore, they lob a2a missiles at each other from beyond visual range.
keep in mind that missiles have to spend their energy maneuvering just like jets do. so an agile aircraft with a well-trained pilot has a pretty fair chance of evading any single missile shot at it.
Missiles can pull g forces that would kill a human.
and yet, many fighter pilots since they were invented around the end of WW2 have managed to dodge them. missiles don’t chase their targets, they don’t have the fuel to. they use something called proportional navigation to aim for where they believe their target will be in order to make their apparent movement disappear. a sidewinder, for example, has 15 seconds of fuel. after that, it’s a glider. if the pilot doesn’t feel like dying that particular day, and they dodge at the right time, the missile misses and lacks the speed to catch the jet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_navigation
if you want examples of how pilots use aggressive maneuvers to evade missiles, there are plenty of videos on YouTube about the subject, including some from Desert Storm that feature the F-16. or head over to the War Thunder forums, there’s plenty of nerds there who would love to spend days leaking classified military documents and info-dumping on you.
The missiles are smaller, faster, and don’t have to keep a human alive inside.
the missiles have as little as 5 seconds of fuel, make most of their attack run as gliders, and lack brains to do more than programmatically guess at where their target will decide to be. they aren’t intelligent, and don’t understand physics.
I’m gonna tell you the same thing I told the other person. while getting shot at is a life and death situation, a well-trained pilot in an agile aircraft might dodge missiles even without chaff and flares, using nothing but the skin of their teeth and their many hours of training on how proportional navigation works.
I think the confusion is that the techniques employed are to tire the missile out, not dodge them. It is possible to dodge in some cases, but, this is due to limitations in missile’s radar (and/or energy) far more than the fighter outmaneuvering something that can do 20g turns at mach 7. Thus, the maneuverability metric that originally brought on this entire conversation is not nearly as beneficial as described as they don’t need to turn on a dime, just in the right direction at the right time.
And yet wing tipping and aerial gunners in prop planes are back.
https://youtu.be/GrzzYTXgnMQ
Tbh, all aerial combat should be done in open cockpit biplanes with the pilots shooting revolvers at one another. It’s supposed to be all elegant and shit like jousting in the sky, so let’s get some treaties done and live as the lord intended.
I grew up outside NYC in the 80’s and every summer my parents took me & my brother upstate to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome where they still fly vintage aircraft from the WWI era. Looking at that website it looks like they still put on their “WWI Dog Fight Spectacular” show, which is something that still makes me smile.
Damn, now i gotta fire up Aces over Europe again.
Oh for sure that’s mainly obsolete, I’m just stating the main differences that I’ve read about them.
F-16s did have a cannon. Don’t know if that was removed in later blocks.