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There’s nearly nothing a fighter pilot
would rather do, completely sober, than try himself against another fighter
pilot in the physical and mental test of skill that is man-to-man air combat.
Sure, there’s a great deal of job satisfaction to be had by shacking a
weapons cache from 20,000 feet, and seeing secondary explosions –
it’s lovely, in fact. But it’s not personal, it’s just
business. And yes, the sensation of a near-perfect landing aboard the ship is as
close as one can come to le petit
mort while fully dressed. But that is a part
of what we do. And it is true that in a many vs. many air combat brawl there is
to be found the kind of fey, wild joy that was only paralleled perhaps a hundred
years or so ago in the clashing collision of cavalry troops, there is the
element of chance: You could do everything right, in a big fight, and still get
killed.
Because in a huge fur ball,
as a mature, multi-plane engagement is known, victory and defeat are only partly
attributable to skill – engagements which follow tactical intercepts are
rarely ever entirely neutral – there is always an advantage accrued to one
side or the other in position, angle or altitude. And there is only so much
information the human mind can process in a four vs. four or 4v6 engagement, at
seven and a half g’s, with the sun scribing crazy arcs in the sky as the
heavens and the sea alternately fill and fly from your windscreen. Odds are,
having accepted the challenge to enter that dangerous environment (as you must
– you are, after all, a fighter pilot) you will, over time, lose track of
a friend, or worse - lose track of a foe. And when you lose sight, you lose the
fight. It is exactly that simple. Because when you lose sight, you will most
likely suffer a missile attack to the belly, a place you cannot visually clear,
a place where you are blind. A place you cannot, therefore, defend. Because
it’s always the one you don’t see that kills
you.
Many v many fights are more like
quantum mechanics than Newtonian physics – there, you take your chances,
and you play the odds. If you are very good, you will mostly emerge victorious.
Mostly.
But nothing is certain.
Because sometimes you get the bear. And sometimes, the bear gets
you.
Not so in a neutral 1v1. There,
you and your adversary are perfectly matched in angle, airspeed and altitude.
When the fight starts, when you accept the engagement, you will quickly enter a
small space of air, bounded by the turning radii of your aircraft. It is a
virtual “knife fight in a phone booth” – and while two can
enter, only one will leave victorious.
In 1v1 BFM, your opponent does not
shoot at your airplane – he shoots at you. When you brief the fight, you
are measuring each other up. You are looking at your friend, and imagining
innovative ways to kill him. You are striving for any advantage – terrain,
altitude, the angle of the sun. This is not just business - it is
personal.
Once airborne, on the way
to the range, you’ll complete your combat checklist, to ensure that every
system is optimized for the struggle ahead. The last thing you’ll do is a
g-warm up: Four g’s one direction for 90 degrees, six g’s back on
course. This serves to inflate your g-suit, and raise your heart rate and blood
pressure – you’ll need them all.
Having reached the pre-agreed
altitude, you’ll maneuver the jet to the correct distance abeam – a
nautical mile and a half, quite frequently; nine thousand feet. And then
you’ll strive to get exactly the right airspeed, often 350 knots. Because
in a moment, the lead will make the radio call “Tapes on,” referring
to the on-board video recording system – this system will capture all your
weapons symbology, to ensure that any missile or gun attacks are valid. It will
also record your altitude, heading and airspeed. Which you want to be exactly at
the pre-briefed number. Because if you are five knots fast, and you win, it will
be thought that you cheated. Which will erase the victory.
You check your orientation to the
world. You look up, and fix the position of the sun: east-northeast, and 80
degrees high. Because you don’t want to let your adversary use it after
the merge to hide. Because, if things work out, you’d like to use it for
yourself.
“Three, two, one
– fight’s on!”
At
“three” you’ll maybe creep the throttles up a bit. At
“two” they’ll be on the mil power stops. At “one,”
you’ll push them into afterburner, and raise the nose just a bit, to keep
from accelerating past the target airspeed. Because once the fight starts,
you’ll want the blowers fully engaged, you’ll want every advantage
you can gain. From this point onward, it’s tooth and nail, hammer and
tong. Just you and him, alone together in the phone booth with an exit just big
enough for
one.
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Some
have said that the art of 1v1 BFM is antiquated, a leftover from the time of
airborne knights and aerial chivalry. A legacy of times past that ought to be
forgone: It is useless, it is dangerous. Missiles will do the killing work at
range. Sometimes when we maneuver to the edge of the performance boundaries, as
we must in BFM, we cross them. Having crossed them, sometimes we
crash.
Sometimes we
die.
Realists say that missiles can
be defeated. Purists will say that nothing teaches so well the desired
attributes of aggressiveness, the desire to win, the knowledge of the airplane,
the knowledge of one’s self. Others will note that from the time you see
your foe in combat, and he sees you, you are 1v1 in a real, personal and very
intimate sense. When you both accept the engagement, and agree to
“grovel” in a full-blown fight, you have agreed that today only one
of you may live, and that the other must die. With today’s weapons
systems, there is no other alternative. Once you open the door, and walk into
the room, it is win or die.
It is no
longer business. It is
personal.
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At
nine thousand feet of separation, your turning circles do not yet intersect. No
point in trading precious airspeed for position when your adversary can take the
angles back without a concomitant sacrifice. You are just too close to exchange
missile attacks head on, and training rules prohibit you from forward hemisphere
gun attacks. Because, while these are valid in combat, in training they would
lead to far too many crashes, too many deaths, as each pilot strove for
advantage.
At 1.5 miles separation,
you are seven seconds away from each
other.
You turn in slightly nose low
– to maintain airspeed, to build turning room in the vertical. The
airframe is moaning from the airspeed, the afterburners throbbing behind you
– your g-suit inflates and deflates as the spring-bob which controls the
valve is alternately depressed and released. You look over your shoulder, with a
fixity of purpose that’s maybe only paralleled in a surgical ward: You
must not lose sight.
He’s in
the HUD – a left-to-left pass. Check the sun – no advantage, either
way. Check airspeed – slow! Bunt the nose down. Better. Grit your teeth,
he’s coming. He's
coming.
He’s
here.
Pull the stick back in your
lap, groan under the sudden onslaught of g – your 150-pound body now
weighs well over a thousand pounds. The blood is pulled from your head, down
towards your abdomen and legs. The g-suit inflates, fighting it. Your vision
narrows, it dims. You strain, and grunt, willing the blood back up, back to your
optic receptors. You must not lose sight. You fight to breathe against the
strain, against the g-suit pressing on your thorax. You gasp for air. You
drown.
Hard, hard across his tail,
and down now, more g, striving for advantage. The earth fills your windscreen,
but it’s far, far away – 20 seconds at least. Life is measured in
much shorter periods in a fight. Ten seconds is an
eternity.
He counters high –
you dare to smile through gritted teeth inside your mask: A mistake. What goes
up, must come down. What must come down is predictable. What comes down must
fight against the earth’s own g force when coming back up again. A g
against him, and one for you as you add your pull to earth's own. That’s
two g’s to you.
Too close now
for a missile attack. It will be a guns kill, unless he rashly tries to flee: He
doesn’t. He can’t. There’s time still to spend, long seconds.
but it’s all over now, all over but the crying. He made a
mistake.
You only get one mistake in
air combat.
You have the angles, you
add the pressure. You beat him down, merciless, pushing hard – now
he’s out of altitude, nowhere to go. Now he’s out of airspeed, no
way to get there. You switch to guns, pull lead, solve for plane of motion,
solve for range. You pull the trigger. You call him out. It’s
over.
There’s nothing quite
like a guns kill: Missiles are mechanical – guns are aimed, guns take
skill, guns require mastery.
A guns
kill is personal.
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