Now is a good time to show what happens if you don’t analyze the aspect properly and turn the wrong way for offset. Let’s say the aspect was 160° left and you turned left for offset. Would this work? The answer is no, and Figure 5-5 shows why. If you turn the wrong way, you will actually be taking away your turning room rather than increasing it. This will not be obvious by just looking at the target’s position on the radar scope.
3. The next step is to hold the targets at 40° on the scope and drive in. In order to hold the targets at 40°, you may have to check turn into them occasionally. The explanation for this is a little outside the scope of this book, but put simply — a target that is not on a collision course will always drift away from you. Think about this statement in driving terms. If you are driving on a two lane highway, you will notice that the oncoming traffic moves across your windshield and then suddenly flashes by. The oncoming traffic never just stays in the exact same spot on the windshield unless you are about to end up with chrome between your teeth. The same thing applies in air combat. During an intercept, you are driving the target away from a collision angle in order to get turning room. That means that the target will keep drifting farther away from you unless you turn to hold it at a particular angle.
In order to perform an intercept, all you have to do is follow the procedures. It’s just like baking a cake. You don’t have to understand the chemical process, you just have to follow the steps.
4. When you get to 10 miles from the bandits, go to STT and turn to put the target you are locked to in the HUD. This is the part of the intercept where things get serious. There are two reasons that we put the target on the nose at 10 miles. The first reason is so we can get a tally on the target. In the HUD, we have a Target Designator box with a target in it. Figure 5-6 shows a HUD with the TD box labeled.
The other reason we turn to put the target on the nose at 10 miles is to get small. It is much harder to see a jet that is pointing at you because there is less surface area to look at.
When we get a tally on the target, the intercept is over and it is time to use BFM. Remember in this fight that we only have a TD box on one of the two targets. As soon as we get a tally on the bandit in the HUD, we need to look for the other guy. Don’t make the mistake of putting your eyes into the “random flail” mode. If the bandits have stayed in a visual formation (which is about 90% of the time), then the other bandit will be just outside the HUD when you get a tally on the guy in the TD box.
The Engagement Phase
Now that we have two MiG-29s in sight, we must kill the one in the TD box fast and then go 1V1 with the other Fulcrum. If you can’t smoke the bandit in the TD box fast, then you have to beat it. For this reason, be ready to shoot as soon as you can VID the target. Shoot and kill and, if you miss, do the “Jane Fonda routine” and give peace a chance. While you’re giving peace a chance, be at high speed and high angle-off from the Fulcrums. Again, you must resist the temptation to enter a turning fight.
Let’s say we do kill one of the Fulcrums at the merge — now what?
When entering a dynamic turning fight against a very maneuverable aircraft in an F-16, you need to remember one concept — lead turn. My game plan if I’m committed to stay and fight is to use a nose low slice at the pass and lead turn at every opportunity. Once you turn 180°, however, your escape window is shut and unless something strange happens (like the MiG is hit by a meteor), you must kill the bandit in order to survive the fight. In a lead turning fight, you must initiate your turn on the Fulcrum prior to passing his 3/9 line. In addition, strive to be at corner airspeed on the initial turn at the merge.
While you are in this lead turning fight with the Fulcrum, think weapons. A Sidewinder can fly better BFM than you can, so put one in the air if you get a chance. Keep in mind, however, that at high aspect when you are in missile parameters on the MiG-29, he may also have you in parameters for his missile. Again, you must fight hard because it is him or you once you enter a turning fight.
Full-on Engagement
This last narrative talks about a fight that I was in a short while back, out at Red Flag. The engagements are brief, but they illustrate how the principles of BFM are applied to accomplish the combat objectives of killing and surviving in an air battle.
A Red Flag launch is always a zoo, and this one was no exception. I had a four ship of F-16s and had gone over to the tower’s ground control frequency only to be greeted on the radio with a cacophony of other flights trying to do the same thing. A few guys must have taxied late and messed up the whole flow, and once the flow of a Red Flag launch starts to go awry, it’s best to just wait it out.
Red Flag is flown out of Nellis AFB just north of Las Vegas, Nevada. Nellis has two long parallel runways which helps get everybody off the ground, but you still have the problem of getting about 50 jets “quick checked” and armed. A fighter always taxis with all weapons and ordnance safed up. What that means for a training sortie is that your bombs, chaff and flares have safety pins installed to keep them from inadvertently firing. Down at the end of the runway, two separate crews get you ready for takeoff. One crew does what we call a “quick check.” They look you over for air worthiness, stuff like the tread on the tires, flight control surfaces and things of this nature. The other crew arms all of your ordnance: bombs, chaff and flares. So when you have to get a big package off the ground, you have to have a taxi and arming plan.
They say that “God is in the details.” The person who came up with that pearl must have tried to plan a Red Flag launch. The plan has to take into account all the “what ifs” such as what if a member of a flight has an aircraft problem and taxis late, what if someone aborts in the arming area and has to taxi back, what if the arming crews start running behind and you get gridlock on the taxiways. Something usually goes wrong, so the success of launch hinges on how everybody reacts to these “what ifs.”
As I sat there turning jet fuel to noise and watched A-10s, F-16s, F-15s, Weasel F-4s, Marine F/A-18s and British Tornados lumbering past me down the taxiway, I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but I knew that it was my taxi time and there was no way I could taxi.
Well, I’ve been around long enough to know that getting stuck in the middle of dorked-up Red Flag launches has about the same probability as getting a zit on your nose on prom night — it is just inevitable. You just have to be patient and wait your turn, so that is what I did.
On this mission, my flight was flying as Red Air. As Red Air, our job was to act as Aggressors and stop Blue Air from bombing the motherland. The plan called for us to taxi behind the mass of Blue Air fighters and then arm, take off and go to our tanker that was orbiting in the western part of the Nellis ranges. Blue Air was going to take off in front of us and go to their tanker in the northeastern section of the range. I sat there and waited until everybody got past us and then finally taxied my four ship out, got quick checked, armed and took off 15 minutes late. As soon as Departure Control passed us over to Buzzsaw (the call sign for the AWACS), I asked if the war had been slipped (moved back because of the late takeoffs). Buzzsaw answered, “Negative,” so right there I knew that the Moe and Curly act on the ground during the launch had cost us. I pushed the airspeed up to just below the Mach and raced for the tanker, hoping that he had extra gas.