[sukhoi-30mki]

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[mamelukesabre]

dog fight???

They still do that?

I thought a “dogfight” nowdays consisted of pushing a button and waiting for the blip on your screen to disappear.

[ThunderSleeps]

Good points, but what if you're dead from a fire-and-forget missile 50 miles before entering the dogfight? Bigger, heavier fighters do have a hard time mixing it up with the smaller lighter ones. That's why they don't do it. They shoot at longer ranges, and if they get caught up in close, they use their big heavy engines to extend and escape.

No sane fighter pilot is intentionally going to fly into a dis-advantageous situation. Adversaries that can, will shoot from as far away as possible. Mixing it up is hard on pilots, hard (stressing) on airframes, and it only takes one mistake or lapse in concentration/judgment to lose the fight, regardless of the capabilities of your aircraft. Fighting BVR is a safer, easier bet that lets you come back and fight again tomorrow.

I'm not saying you don't need to have dogfighting capability. (witness the F-4 without a gun, oops!) But I don't think that mode of combat should be your primary tactic, nor the primary deciding factor for a modern multi-role fighter. Being a good dogfighter is nice. Being a good enough fighter to get the mission done and avoid the dogfight is even better.

[Flavius]

9 hours ...

Guess that does not include in flight pit stop

[piytar]

Obligatory “wouldn’t even see the F22 that shot it down, and if it did close, the F22 would chew it up.”

But obastard has killed the F22 in favor of the F35 boondoggle, so nevermind...

[piytar]

BTW, not to derail, but some airpower experts are likely to drop by.

Can someone explain to me what’s so hard to understand about air supremacy doctrine? You fly the baddest azz possible fighters and anti-SAM planes, clear the airspace, and then you can fly busses with wings to provide ground support/bombing. Instead we’ve killed the F22 in favor of a “multi-role” F35 that won’t own the air nearly as well.

Insanity. Or am I missing something?