Some great points brought up here. Thanks to everyone who has contributed thus far. Here’s to refusing apathy…(cracks beer)!
Recently I have been thinking what if I stripped away the IR component of the fight; in a conservative approach. Say that the bandit could get a crisp tone 100% of the time, regardless of whether you were terrain masking and flying cold (no afterburner). What could I gain from that knowledge?
- Use of my after burner
- Use of the vertical
Plus is it really worth betting your life on these days? It seems these tactics would be reserved for last ditch efforts anyway. So I have refocused my attention more on kinetics. Now am I asking in what envelops do I have the advantage, given I am not concerned with IR? Let’s revisit some factors affecting missile PK.
RANGE
As range decreases missile PK increases, obviously. This is because the missile’s motor has a finite burn time; for short range missiles most likely in the 5 second range (speculation… those #s are classified). After this point the missile starts decelerating and loses maneuvering potential, which leads us into the next factor…
G
The AIM-9X is equipped with thrust vectoring. So coming off rail is when it’s most maneuverable, and why it is so deadly at close range even high off bore sight. After the motor’s fuel runs out the missile loses this thrust vectoring capability.
Put together this post-motor-burn envelop presents a critical area we should exploit. So how does this affect our tactics? Well knowing the missile is fairly weak at large ranges means we can, for practical purposes, disregard certain max range shots for a time. Assuming both you and the enemy have reached (at the same time) max range on the indexer you should hold off firing for better PK. While the bandit has taken his max range shot you continue to press until just outside visual range (we’ll say 15nm), at which point you fire and begin defensive maneuvering.
By this time the enemy missile’s motor has burned out. We know the missile will start decelerating. To counter this the missile will have to trade altitude for speed. We should not allow this if we can help it. This means establishing a zoom climb (no more than 45 deg and FULL AB). This has the added effect of depleting the missile’s energy faster. We can further deplete its energy with a cranking maneuver so the missile has to pull more lead. Now at some point we will be forced to come down because of speed loss, so I suggest beginning a downward slicing turn at around 550 kias.
Around this time our own missile should be closing in. The bandit will either have begun defensive maneuvering or is continuing on and about to blow up. Either way we should press the attack. This is where I would begin a series of defensive breaks into the enemy missile while decreasing range. This also where I would reintroduce the IR masking tactics (getting low, popping flares, flying cold). When the bandit gets within RTR on the indexer I fire again and bug out.
I will begin testing out this hypothesis sometime this week, unless any of you guys want to take up the challenge. Feel free to post results here.