Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site alice.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!alice!wolit
From: wolit@alice.UUCP (Jan Wolitzky)
Newsgroups: net.aviation
Subject: Re: warplanes
Message-ID: <3431@alice.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Mar-85 09:42:08 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.3431
Posted: Fri Mar  1 09:42:08 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Mar-85 04:22:59 EST
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 58

> Seems like everyone here wants to talk about improving their flying
> technique. Does anyone want to talk about warplanes and dogfights
> and such? Questions like, wouldn't an AWACS with a bunch of Phoenixes
> (which are reputed to have a range of 100 miles) be able to control
> the sky even against F15s? If two modern fighters released their
> missiles at each other at the same time, would both go down? Would
> having a tail gun be of value in dogfights without missiles?
> The harrier is reputed to be very tricky in a dogfight due to its
> ability to use vectored thrust to do things no normal fighter can.
> How would it fare against an F15? etc.

The first question is easy:  there are a lot more people on this net
(like me) who fly light planes and want to exchange info about technique 
than there are fighter jocks with first-hand experience.  However, if you 
want to armchair it...

An AWACS with a bunch of Phoenix missiles would be a pretty sorry
dogfighter.  For that matter, so would any other plane (like an F-14,
for instance) that relied on the Phoenix for dogfighting, or
any plane (like the F-15) that relied heavily on any radar-guided
missile (yes, the F-15 can also carry the IR-guided Sidewinder which,
current reliability problems aside -- nearly a third of the
Sidewinders in the USAF inventory were recently found to be not
combat-ready -- has a pretty good record in combat).  The reason for
this is that a radar transmitter can be detected at a far greater range
than it is effective at -- all you need is a fancy Fuzz-Buster.
Because of this, whoever turns on his search radar first in a dogfight
usually loses big:  it's like two guys in a dark room, each carrying a
flashlight and a gun -- whoever turns on his flashlight to find the
other becomes a sitting duck.  And you have to admit that without
radar (and radar-guided missiles), an AWACS is nothing but a very
expensive 707.  That's why they need lots of fighter escort.  Radar is
also pretty expensive and unreliable compared to passive techniques
like IR and eyeballs.  In dissimilar combat exercises run by the USAF
and the Navy, F-5's with guns and IR-missiles usually beat the pants
off F-15's and the like, especially when the numbers are anything like
what could be expected in a NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation.

A tail gun would probably be a real effective weapon, as long as you
had a tail gunner to man it (I would hate to have to fly an F-15 while
looking in the rear-view mirror, and a radar-guided gun probably
wouldn't work well enough to be worth it).  Take a look at intercept
photos of some current Soviet bombers some day in Aviation Week -- a lot 
of them carry tail guns.

Harriers did pretty well against modern supersonic Mirage fighters
during the Falklands fiasco.  They used cheap, effective Sidewinders
(see above) and the ability to get an opponent off one's tail -- and
get on *HIS* tail, which is the only reliable way to score a kill --
by "VFF-ing", which is what the British pilots called using vectored
forward thrust to stop on a dime, so to speak.

If you want to read a very good account of the relative merits of
cheap, simple weapons versus expensive, fancy ones, see James Fallows'
"National Defense," which came out about three or four years ago, I
believe.
-- 
Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ; (201) 582-2998