Often in Hollywood you will see aerial or space dogfights in which a pilot will line up on a target’s 6 o’clock, destroy the target, and then fly straight through the cloud of smoke and fire and carry on. Is this realistic?? Aren’t there massive chunks of metal in this cloud waiting to chew up the insides of the attacker’s engines? Does this happen IRL?
In: 10
Just recently there was an incident where a Chinese military plane dumped chaff in front of an American one that potentially could have damaged the engines.
[https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/chinese-jet-us-military-interaction-00045832](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/chinese-jet-us-military-interaction-00045832)
Even thick smoke can starve an engine, and anything bigger than a fleck of paint can chew up the fanblades. However in the air, at normal speeds and guns interception distances, I couldn’t tell you if it was realistic that a target’s debris would have any chance of occupying the same space as the pursuer.
In media, aircraft have to be close enough that they can fit in the same camera shot, or at least enter it a few seconds after each other so the audience can see their positioning play out in the dogfight.
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