As I was contemplating this dilemma, I was being annoyed by a loud buzzing in my earphones and my wingman squawking to me about something or other. I remember thinking, “I wish everyone would just shut up so I could figure out if I had enough gas to run these Varks down.” Wait a minute. “Say again, two.” My wingman repeated in an exasperated tone, “Come hard left — hard left, Eagle in your deep 6 for two miles.” Coming to my senses, I snapped the throttle to idle to get down to corner airspeed while simultaneously pulling the jet around in an 8 G turn looking for the bandit. I picked up a tally on a single Eagle at my 6 and expected Buzzsaw to pass a kill call on me, but Buzzsaw was quiet so I kept fighting. After about four seconds of turning at idle, I slammed the throttle back to full AB and kept my lift vector right on the Eagle. He started a big nose high move in the vertical, and so I kept my lift vector on him and went up with him.
Even if the sky is black with the enemy, you must fight the most immediate threat. I really didn’t have a choice in this case but to keep my lift vector on the guy and challenge him even though it cost me knots. If I stayed level when he went up, he would have sliced down on me and drilled me.
He immediately saw that this vertical position was going to get him shot, so he pulled back down into me, and we passed canopy to canopy with about 150° of angle-off. There are two things that you need to enter a multi-bogey turning fight — situation awareness and gas. Even then, you sometimes get whacked. Without these two things, however, your odds of survival are low. So when your situation awareness and gas are low, it is best to quickly become a pacifist. As I passed the F-15 close aboard, I decided that it was time to “think thoughts of peace and not of affliction.” In the separation, I looked back at the Eagle and it turned out that he didn’t want to fight either so we both turned tail and accelerated in opposite directions. It was about this time that my pea brain realized that I was “blind” on my wingman — I called, “Position, two.” He stated that he was engaged offensive with an Eagle above my fight. I told him that he’d better kill him quick or end up single ship because I was leaving the fight and heading westbound to the tanker. There were campers on the ground in the surrounding mountains that probably had better situation awareness on this fight than I did. It was time to get small and go fast. My wingman soon called a snapshot on the Eagle but not a kill and then fell in behind me as we headed west.
Well, another fine day at the office was near an end as we found the tanker and sucked down a couple of thousand pounds of gas. We could have made it back to Nellis without the extra gas, but it is always nice to have extra fuel when you know that there are 50 other guys heading for the same patch of concrete.
Red Air’s mission would have been a resounding success but for the fact that we didn’t have CAP far enough forward to get to the bombers before they dropped their bombs. The Varks and the Tornado did not get “tapped” until they were off the target, and Buzzsaw was a little slow communicating the presence of the second (and more important) gorilla.
From a BFM standpoint, a lot of F-15s got shot while doing a great job protecting the bombers. My element did well, getting several kills and surviving the engagement.
Conclusion
Art of the Kill has provided a solid introduction to Basic Fighter Maneuvers, following the normal progression of the air-to-air phase of fighter training:
► BFM Geometry
► Offensive BFM
► Defensive BFM
► Head-on BFM
It also provided a brief overview of the next two subjects taught in a fighter curriculum:
► Intercept Geometry
► Tactical Intercepts
Fighter pilot instructors use this “building block” approach to teach fundamental fighter pilot skills. Without BFM, a fighter pilot cannot master any other phase of air combat. Now that you have a solid BFM foundation, you should be ready to move on to the more advanced air combat subjects.
Until then, fly hard and shoot straight.
Afterword
Art of the Kill and “Fighter Air Combat Trainer” provided a solid introduction to Basic Fighter Maneuvers. The next in the Art of the Kill series will expand the coverage of BVR combat tactics and maneuvering, and will include tactics for maneuvering “elements” and “flights” of two or more aircraft against multiple opponents.
The third in this series will take a unique perspective — that of the world-class “adversary” aircraft the MiG-29 Fulcrum. Flown by very few Western pilots, the MiG-29’s unique flight dynamics and weapons suite make flying and fighting from its cockpit a unique art.
Those of you who are interested in further reading on the subject of modern air combat may wish to read Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering by Robert Shaw (Naval Institute Press) and The Ace Factor: Air Combat and the Role of Situational Awareness by Mike Spick (Naval Institute Press).
BFM LESSON PLANS
This section outlines how to use Art of the Kill the same way a fighter pilot would use an Air Force workbook. Each chapter corresponds to a lesson, complete with lesson objectives and quizzes to test your understanding. The answer key for the quizzes is at the end of the section.
Lesson 1: Geometry of Air Combat
This lesson is designed to introduce you to the basic terms and definitions of air combat. Terms and definitions are important to understand because they will form the foundation of our discussion of Basic Fighter Maneuvers. In this section, we will describe the angular relationships between aircraft in a fight, the pursuit options, and the weapons envelope.
Objectives
Once you’ve read Chapter 1, you should be able to do the following:
► Describe the geometry of 1V1 air combat
► Identify the angular relationship between two aircraft
► Understand aspect angle
► Describe the attack pursuit courses
► Understand what each pursuit course offers to the attacking aircraft
► Understand how out-of-plane maneuvering affects the pursuit course
► Describe the weapons envelope
► Define Rmax and Rmin
► Describe the factors that affect Rmax and Rmin
Lesson 1 Quiz
1. Which attack pursuit course is used most of the time to shoot a missile at an adversary? Holding your nose on this pursuit course for the entire attack will probably result in an overshoot.