BVR, WTF?
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As the title may suggest, I am having some trouble with engagements BVR. Initially, I was having trouble identifying a bogie vs a friendly in the realm of BVR. Now that I am finally shooting down more bad guys than good guys, I find that I am being hammered BVR. My question is this: once an enemy has obtained a lock BVR, and fired a missile, how do I defeat the missile, and still kill the bogey?
Thanks again Fellas,
Dirty
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Huge topic, i’ll try to be brief:
MAR= minimum abort range
This is the most important thing in BVR survival. Its the minimum range at which you can approach a target, turn 180 degrees at full throttle and outrun his missile. So, whats the MAR value? well, as you may have figured, it depends. It depends on the jet you are fighting against, your jet, your speed, his speed, your altitudes, the missile type you are trying to outrun. Its a dynamic value, not constant. But to save you time, i’ll give you a rule of thumb for BMS. Against an su-27 armed with adder missiles AND with your jammer on, the enemy will penetrate (burn through your jamming) at about 23 nautical miles and soon afterwards he will fire. On most situations your MAR for his 23nm shot is about 16-17nm’s. Try it yourself. Minimize your MAR at each attempt and see if you survive. REMEMBER, upon arriving at the MAR you should turn away from the enemy and be in maximum throttle. This is also known as pump(or drag, not sure). Now, you should look around the internet for more stuff on BVR and BVR survival, you should learn the a-pole, m-pole, f-pole concepts and many more. -
Ideally kinematically with a max rate turn to zero aspect and a straight line extension until safe. The difficulty is maintaining this extension ability primarily expressed as range with turn ability, altitude, and speed secondary. What is the minimum distance to a threat missile where you can simple turn around and out pace it? During the BVR process there are four main motivations:
1. Detecting and engaging the hostile as early as possible to best facilitate 2-4.
2. Maximize shooting energy.
3. Minimize closure during guidance.
4. Minimize time to convert to extension.
My short motto is: sprint-crank-slice.Sprint to give maximum energy to the missile with speed and altitude, supersonic usually. Post-launch the goal is almost the opposite, slow your closure by geometry (crank target cold ~50° off the nose) and slow as much as practical. A missile does not benefit from a cheerleading platform following behind it. Finally at a time of your choosing slice away to quickly convert to an extension. This places a floor on how slow you can get in step 3 as required by step 4. In the turn away make extensive use of the vertical as energy reserve. Low altitude thick air is unfriendly to a coasting missile. Appreciating the Mach “happy zones” for the F-16 helps for the extension. Mach 0.9 and 1.3 are good figures. Several seconds into the extension recognize when you’re against a Mach barrier and start pitching up as you aren’t effectively adding speed energy.
Example:
AWACS call finds something out at 45 miles and the jet is prepared at 450 KCAS. Final engagement decision at 35 miles at MAXAB throttle looking for 700-900 KTAS at 25-35 kft. Shooting at 25 miles and an immediate slight climb crank to the cold side down to 450 KCAS. Remember GS is what is closing you with the bandit’s missile so don’t fly into outer space with a high KTAS and a crappy KCAS making your turn radius huge and rate small. At 15 miles a 4-5G turn to 0 aspect nose down ~30° and max power looking for M0.9. Punching through M1.1 a gradual shallowing of the attitude to not push more than M1.3 unless very clean.By argument of symmetry there is no technique for shooting down your clone where you are assured of victory and your clone has no chance. Anything you can do, he can do. The only way to defeat the bandit reliably is to exploit a technical difference. If the technical advantage is small or reversed you must accept that your Pk can’t be high on this shot if you want your P-survive to be high as well. Shoot from farther away and go defensive earlier. Don’t die chasing the MPRF-timer down to zero; accept HPRF or even some inertial coast. An AMRAAM in the face can have a positive effect on a marginal overall engagement even if that particular missile won’t hit anything.
If you get launched upon inside the range to run away… ya goofed. There’s another bundle of tricks to deal with that but it’s not nearly as reliable.
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Its not a simple topic. I believe it takes more than one sortie to cover during MQT
Broadly speaking, to survive BVR you want to keep the leading edge away from you. What is the leading edge? The group closest to the bottom of the FCR, which is not friendly. Range to the leading edge is something we are constantly keeping track of. Our BVR shot doctrine will depend a bit on what our tactical situation is. If we are alone out there, we are going to skate every time, going out with sufficient range to the leading edge such that any shots in the air are defeated simply by our turn, and such that we have sufficient range preserved to be able to turn back in, reacquire the leading edge and ensure leading edge attrition.
Preserving range is a very good starting goal for learning BVR techniques. We can preserve range by adhering to our timeline - something we decide before we get out there, generally based on others experience If our skate timeline calls for us to go out NLT 24 miles, and we go out at 20, we start to push ourselves towards the hostiles downrange more than needed. If we have hostiles downrange, who are committed to us, we can give away separation very easily, but its hard to impossible to get back. So when we go out at or before our desired out range, we know we can recommit with sufficient separation to the leading edge to employ weapons on targeted groups with launch-and-decide tactics.
The upshot of the above, is largely this: you can defeat missiles most easily, by not flying towards them. Defeat them by not flying into the enemy aircraft. Retain separation unless committed to a visual merge. Avoid committing to a visual merge against an aware enemy.
A shot taken at you inside of the minimum abort range is by definition, able to run you down even if you immediately turn away from the missile and try to outrun it. Radar missile defense (RMD) against a threat inside MAR is then going to be more complex than outrunning the missile. Unclassified papers on the topic for modern missiles do not paint a very pretty picture for survival. Ideal miss distances generated from simulations are still smaller than the warheads lethal radius in modern weapons. Inside visual range, you may be able to ‘hide’ inside of the minimum range of the weapon - or cause it problems in maintaining lead pursuit.
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So, would it be a true statement that real life BFM is more cat and mouse than Top Gun? If so, what is the key to achieving your objective unscathed? In my mind I am imagining a constant yo-yo between progressing towards your objectives, and turn and burn at MAR…
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BFM as a term refers to Basic Fighter Maneuvers and means within visual range (WVR) air combat. When you start talking BVR engagements, you are in the realm of ACT (air combat tactics). For what it’s worth, there is absolutely nothing realistic about anything in Top Gun. Very entertaining, but that’s about it!
There are many reasons to trespass inside MAR, it doesn’t necessarily mean you screwed up. It has a lot to do with what your risk level is, whether or not that target is aware of you, and how badly you need that target to go away. Sometimes you might need to bust MAR to get through a target blocking your path home, or maybe turning away will fly you back into a SAM MEZ you don’t wanna trespass. Maybe you are the only fighter between the enemy and the strike package/HVAA you are tasked to protect. You’re pretty unpopular as an Escort or OCA fighter if you run away and let the bomb droppers or AWACS get shot. Many on here have given great unclassified tips on how to operate in BMS. Discussion beyond basic definitions rapidly gets into classified realms.
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So, would it be a true statement that real life BFM is more cat and mouse than Top Gun? If so, what is the key to achieving your objective unscathed? In my mind I am imagining a constant yo-yo between progressing towards your objectives, and turn and burn at MAR…
Well, as above, Top Gun hurts to rewatch, with all the contradicting statements and meaningless slang they throw around… but they do portray BFM as procedural, which it is.
ACT is a little more open. I guess, the key is to identify the decisions you need to make in the air, and figure out what needs to inform those decisions. Brief commit criteria before takeoff, so you know when you plan to engage BVR and when you can just keep heading on that strike mission. Plan a timeline (measured in miles) for your theoretical missile engagement.
Figure out, before takeoff, what should be happening at each stage of the mission. React conservatively if the situation you end up in, wasnt planned for. Ask yourself at mission planning - is target destruction required, or desired? Are friendly losses acceptable? Should I go out and go home, or banzai and merge?
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Definitely banzai
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Definitely banzai
Well, there are as above, circumstances where the attrit rate is acceptable for flying past our MOR and then MAR. My personal preference is to set DOR in the brief and then stick to it - but the mission might dictate that destruction of engaged contacts is required, not merely desired. A key example being a HVAACAP mission, where we will set a very conservative commit criteria but where destruction of hostiles is required, forcing us to banzai at missile timeout if there are still hot survivors in the leading edge.
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Well, there are as above, circumstances where the attrit rate is acceptable for flying past our MOR and then MAR. My personal preference is to set DOR in the brief and then stick to it - but the mission might dictate that destruction of engaged contacts is required, not merely desired. A key example being a HVAACAP mission, where we will set a very conservative commit criteria but where destruction of hostiles is required, forcing us to banzai at missile timeout if there are still hot survivors in the leading edge.
I wouldn’t disagree at all, however attrition while expected from time to time in a real shooting war (in some combat missions as much as 10% can be acceptable) I wouldn’t say is the leading decision making process. It’s more based on winning cues vs losing cues, than the fear of losing jets. The key is not placing jets in a position to lose (at least for initial shots by bandits, getting run down is an entirely different set of tactics, e.g. break-to-six, left/right, ect) in the first place. There is a fighter pilot (former F-16) who flies with the vUSAF which mainly simulates FSX and peacetime operations, basically stated the following to me, in paraphrase: “We would generally look at things from two perspectives. Do I have the advantage? Then okay, I go into it. If I didn’t have the advantage then I would leave the area and live to fight another day.”
So basically it is smart to banzai against a single group or package when you are winning against it.
Winning cues in BVR are the following:
@8:
4.2.18. Decision Range and Transition to WVR.
4.2.18.1. Winning Indicators.
4.2.18.1.1. Sorted, and employed/cranked on-time, and neither fighter is spiked.
4.2.18.1.2. Sorted, and employed/cranked on-time, and spiked.
4.2.18.1.3. Sorted, and employed/cranked late, and Naked or TA > 30 degrees.Losing cues in BVR are the following:
@8:
4.2.18.2. Losing Indicators.
4.2.18.2.1. Locked/unresolved sort, and employed behind timeline and spiked.
4.2.18.2.2. No contact by ~16 NM and Spiked.Taking this further we can then use these decision making metrics to apply the following:
@8:
4.2.18.5.2. 2vX DR.
4.2.18.5.2.1. Banzai when winning against the targeted group with a separation of approximately 30 NM from the closest non-targeted group AND if C2 has the SA on the follow on group.
4.2.18.5.2.2. Skate in all other circumstances.• If winning against the targeted group and no SA to the follow-on group(s).
• If losing against the targeted group.From there it’s a function of transitioning to WVR, preparing for ACM contracts, breaking down the last 10 miles and gaining the tally, finally minimizing the time-to-kill (TTK) on any remaining survivors. Most of the time if employed correctly with a wingman, you’ll see only splashes (at least against AI) by the time you get to the last 5-8 miles to the merge. Against humans you’re more likely to have at least one guy left at the merge, but depending on skill level may result in the nothing but F-16 parts (Falcon Online come back to us you sweet sexy b!t@h!!).
At least that’s how we do things in our VFW, brother
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Hey redshift, can i have your manual? pretty please??
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I do BVR like this - if it’s not a ‘29’ on your RWR or has a lower number than 27 in a ‘Declare’ report by the AWACS - then might as well fly into the no-escape range or close to that.
If it’s some kind of a MiG-29, the distance is still somewhere at RMax and it locks you up (you hear a warning noise) - then notch/beam to break lock (put him on your 3 or 9 o’clock via a fast turn - this usually breaks the lock) - you can even do the same if it’s a MiG-29A which is armed with only active radar missiles to make them miss. Usually I engage these at ~ half the range between RMax and no-escape.
If it’s Su-27 or better… well… Beaming is ineffective so get a shot off at RMax, wait for a missile to go pitbull then turn the tail and run. These guys have missiles that reach further than AIM120s and it’s better to be running away as fast as you can when they go active.
Of course for me all of the above applies to 1:1 scenarios. If I’m outnumbered then I will try to take a lot less risk and engage even MiG-23s from as far as I can. Because by the time your missile goes pitbull - the rest of them will be way too close for comfort.
One important thing to remember is the DRAG. The missile’s motor resource is very finite and usually runs out before it goes active - but yours is infinite compared to it. Meaning the missile will start losing speed while you will not. The lower altitude causes more air resistance slowing the missile down - so dive and make it chase you there for some time. Then immediately go up - missile will lack the needed momentum to gain altitude.
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… Then immediately go up - missile will lack the needed momentum to gain altitude.
Good tips - thank you.
And yes agree on this technique, have saved my behind a number of times.
You even see the enemy AI pull this very maneuver when you watch the missile cam.