Chapter 2
OFFENSIVE BFM
It was a great fall day at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida. I was flying a BFM ride with the “Top Dogs" — the 61st Fighter Squadron. This was my seventh ride in the F-16C, and I was quickly learning to love the power of that big GE engine and the improved avionics. My previous 850 hours in the F-16 had been in A models, which are much lighter (and more primitive) than the C model. The A model is powered by the old version of the Pratt and Whitney F100, which was a good engine when it was made, but is an underpowered relic compared to the GE F101 that powers the Block 30 F-16 flown by the 61st. Even my memory of the Pratt-powered F-16A had faded somewhat, however, because my most recent 500 hours of fighter time had been in the venerable A-7D Corsair II.
I had left MacDill AFB and the F-16A five years earlier for A-7D training out in Tucson, Arizona. My Guard squadron expected to fly the A-7 for a year or two after I arrived and then make the transition to F-16s. That “year or two” turned into five years of doing nothing but flying low and bombing, bombing and more bombing. Not that I have anything against bombing, mind you. It’s just that when all you do is bomb, it gets old fast, especially if you’re a former Viper driver. We did do something that we called air-to-air in the A-7, but fighting air-to-air in an A-7 is like watching bowling on TV — it’s slow and boring. You come into the fight at about 400 knots and quickly get slower and lower. Nobody has any energy to maneuver after about 90° of turn, and it’s impossible to get any energy back without extending for several minutes. Most fights end up in a kind of neutral wallow. Year after year of this type of air-to-air had atrophied my BFM skills to the point that I was starting to have trouble keeping my hands from banging into each other when I was debriefing a BFM fight. (I also could only chew gum while sitting down for fear of seriously injuring myself.)
But now, it was five years later, and I was very happy to be back driving an F-16 in the skies over sunny Florida. Taxiing out to fly, I still looked the part — shock of unruly hair hanging down from the front of my helmet, boyish grin on my face, piercing gaze. It’s too bad looks are irrelevant in fighters. The only thing that counts is what’s inside. My cranium was crammed with all the correct terms and techniques of F-16 BFM, but it remained to be seen whether or not any of this would come out once good old American aluminum started to strain under a G load.
In the F-16C syllabus, this ride was called BFM-1. BFM-1 consists of offensive perch setups[12] starting from 3,000 feet and working out to 9,000 feet. The 3,000-foot setup is essentially a gun fight with both fighters starting at 300 knots. At the “Fight’s on” call, the instructor pilot (IP), from a position out in front, does some serious moves to stay alive while the student (yours truly) tries to film him under the gun sight.
In this case, the IP was a blond-haired guy that we called “Poster Child.” At the “Fight’s on” call, he initiated an 8 G break, slightly out of plane. The fight started with my jet slightly to the inside of the turn, so as the IP made his move, I leaned to lag for a couple of seconds and then started to pull back to lead pursuit. Within another two seconds, I realized that I was in lag for too long because I could not get my nose on the IP as he started to pull slightly nose high. I was stuck in lag as the fight started uphill. Poster Child kept a tally throughout the fight and quickly called “knock it off.” Wow! This was happening fast. The whole fight lasted less than 10 seconds. I was so far behind in this fight that I felt like I was hanging on the tail of the jet. We set up again, and I got back on a 3,000 foot perch. I decided I better crawl back up into the cockpit,[13] or I would never shoot this guy.
The next fight started the same way, but this time, I only leaned toward lag for a split second and then went right to lead pursuit. In a gun fight, you know you’re going to win when you see your opponent make an aggressive out-of-plane maneuver to keep from getting shot. When I first went to lead pursuit, I pulled the throttle out of burner to slow my overtake. As I entered the gun envelope with my airspeed under control, get me to overshoot so he started to jink out of plane. I had him. I got a good shot and called a kill, ending the fight.
On the next setup, I started back at 6,000 feet. The 6,000 foot setup is the easiest offensive perch position to start from because you’re just outside the bandit’s turn circle. (The chapter you’re about to read covers all of this turn circle stuff.) On this fight, Poster Child started a very high-G defensive turn straight into me, but I flew textbook offense and quickly got into guns parameters. As I approached the guns positions, my eyes beheld a sight I hadn’t seen before. Poster Child reversed the direction of his turn as I approached him and started pulling away from me instead of executing a classic jink out of plane. As I started to reposition, he again reversed his turn direction and started to pull away from me.
I was getting confused as I closed the range, so I did what I always do when I’m confused and flying guns offensive — I set my wings to the horizon and pulled up away from the bandit. As soon as I was established in the vertical, I rolled back to watch what he was doing. This move kept me from overshooting at close range and slowed the pace of the fight. After pulling in the vertical and rolling back to keep a tally on Poster Child, I noticed he was real slow, and his speed brakes were extended. Poster Child’s jet looked like it was hanging from a string, though in reality, he still had about 120 knots of airspeed. No problem. I kept the nose up, and after I had bled off a few more knots, I started back down into him. He had given up all his energy (maneuvering potential) to spit me out, and he was a goner when I didn’t blow past him. This fight ended with me in the saddle as both of our jets hung on the burner at very high alpha.[14]
I really didn’t know what the heck he was doing during that guns defense until Poster Child described it later in the debrief. It turned out that the maneuver he executed was called the “snake defense.” In Chapter 3, we’ll discuss how to use this move to keep from getting gunned. In order for it to work, a guy must try to follow you through it. I didn’t follow him in this fight. When I saw the move unfold, I pulled away. The maneuver turned out to a good counter to a snake guns defense.
Well, the fun didn’t end there. The next setup was from 9,000 feet. On a 9,000 foot perch, you’re well outside the bandit’s turn circle, so you have to know (and execute) more BFM to get into a guns position. This fight started well as I drove into the turn circle and initiated my first turn. As I kept pulling toward Poster Child at about 7 Gs, however, things started to go bad. I kept pulling into Poster Child as he executed a “continuous turn” defense with his lift vector right on me. My turn rate, of course, was better than his at this point because he had turned for a longer period of time and had bled off more airspeed. His turn radius, however, was tighter (also due to his lower airspeed). As the fight continued, I used my superior turn rate to pull my nose toward his jet. But as I pulled his jet into the HUD, something didn’t look right.
“What the heck is wrong?”
The range between the jets closed, and the pace of the fight quickened. Poster Child was in the HUD, but the line-of-sight rate was too great. Things were happening fast when suddenly a “helmet fire” broke out in my cockpit. A helmet fire — also known as a “cranium meltdown" — causes a fighter pilot’s brain to experience a kind of rapid reverse evolution. In this state, you try to attack and kill whatever is in your field of view at the time, regardless of the consequences. Luckily, Poster Child was still out in front me, so in a blur of rapid events that didn’t “feel” right, I went for guns. I missed and then grossly overshot to the outside of the turn. Poster Child immediately reversed his turn, and there I was, helmet on fire in a flat scissors. After a few slow turns in the scissors, it was clear that neither side was going to get the advantage, so Poster Child called “knock it off” and ended the fight. After this fight, we had both reached bingo, so we rejoined for a battle damage check and then headed back to MacDill.