I have seen comments over and over saying traditional dogfights are over, but don’t most pilot training programs still emphasize dogfight training? The F-35 is also still very much an agile plane. If dogfights are in the past, why are modern stealth fighters not just large missile/bomb/drone trucks built to emphasize payload?
In: Engineering
There are multiple reasons behind this, unfortunately. One of the simplest is related to the saying “generals are always fighting the last war”. In the last big war where two major powers were throwing aircraft at each other (WW2) dogfighting was important. So, we train pilots to be able to do the thing that we know based on historical precedent to be important. Another reason is that even if a scenario is unlikely, you still want your pilots to be prepared for every eventuality since they are sitting on something like a billion dollars of military hardware. I would also expect that this is partly down to the fact that a lot of the truly modern warfare is highly automated, so there isn’t necessarily much to teach pilots about there (not nothing, of course, but the human involvement is minimized).
[Long Answer](https://youtu.be/rD2C1H-dzzI?si=71rRlnvmkLZBZcHL)
Short answer: one example was during the Vietnam War
The fighter planes that the US was using at the time wasn’t built with a gun due to them thinking that dogfighting was obsolete, instead they relied on launching air-air missiles before ditching and returning home
The Vietnamese were using planes built for close range dog fighting but lacked the range that the US had, so this sounds like it’s a major disadvantage right?
Well you’d be wrong, since Politicians decided that the US planes could only attack enemies that were close enough that missiles weren’t effective and since they didn’t have guns they couldn’t attack at close range
Then came a WW veteran who said fuck this, we’re putting guns on these planes, and they took out half of Vietnams plane fleet within 13 minutes
Not a pilot or anything, but…
* There are lots of situations short of full on high end combat. Pilots might have to go say hi to someone who’s radio broke, run off the dude who blundered into restricted airspace, get a good look at someone approaching a border, etc. So there’ll still be a eed for maneuvering close to a non-cooperative aircraft.
* With drones (and to a lesser extent, cruise missiles), there’s an emerging need to shoot down less demanding targets without using expensive missiles. Dogfighting might come in useful here.
* I suppose there’s the risk of being in a situation where you can’t use missles: more targets than you’re carrying missiles, got jumped on your way home, the other guy’s stealth/ECM/cyber wiorks better than you’d like it to, etc. Don’t know if this is a real-life concern.
* Even without dogfights, some degree of maneuverability is important–a ‘normal’ plane takes in the order of minutes to turn around. If nothing else, you’ve got to be able to point your sensors in the general direction of an opponent, and the engagement envelopes of missiles is affected by the lanuchers speed and direction, and by the target’s ability to turn and run.
I mean, the quick and dirty answers;
>why do pilots still train for it
They don’t (sort of).
>and why are planes still built for it?
They aren’t (kinda).
The whole question of the irrelevancy of dogfighting was brought up as a result of Vietnam. The US was wrong back then to think that dogfighting was a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean the general concept that dogfights could be rendered obsolete isn’t correct.
>The F-35 is also still very much an agile plane.
It actually…isn’t…kinda? The best of the 4th gens are actually more impressive than the F-35 from a maneuverability standpoint, but it also doesn’t *need* to be a better dogfighter.
Granted, its big brother the F-22 is *obscenely* impressive and agile, but it’s also arguably inferior to the F-35, entirely due to the aspects of the F-35 that allow it to essentially sidestep dogfighting.
Anyone who’s saying dogfighting is obsolete doesn’t know what they’re talking about. While improved technology makes it less likely, only a fool doesn’t prepare for it.
The US in particular learned that lesson very quickly in Vietnam. The goal is to kill the enemy before they see you, but you still prepare to go toe to toe with them, or you’ll end up dead.
It’s probably going to be more important again in the future when other countries get stealth aircraft. Currently the US stealth planes can see and shoot down other planes from 20+ miles away without being seen on enemy radar.
If you want to detect a stealth aircraft you need to be really close, not quite dog fight with guns close, but if all 4 missiles fail hit you’ll be dog fight with guns close within a few seconds.
There were multiple aerial dog fights between India and Pakistan on February 27 2019. Both air forces are large and modern, and used fairly up to date equipment in the confrontation (F-16Cs and JF-17s on the Pakistani side, heavily upgraded Su-30s and Mig-21s on the Indian side) so dogfights between air forces of comparable ability and close geographic proximity are far from a thing of the past.
Dogfights are not obsolete, they’re just not conducted in the same way they used to. Fighter jets still need to be able to combat each other, but they’re expected to do that with guided missiles. They’re too fast to circle around each other like WW2 planes did to get their guns on them but they still have to get a lock on to fire from a position that the rocket can hit the other aircraft. Missiles are very maneuverable but you can’t just shoot it in a random direction and expect the rocket to do all the work and find the target, you have to fire from a position where it’s likely to hit the target. In a dogfight a pilot is expected to avoid being locked on by the enemy while they get a lock on them and shoot them down. Their maneuverability is meant to keep them safer to avoid lock on, and if they’re fired upon, to make it hard for the rocket to reach its target. Of course, again, the jet is not expected to defend itself just by avoiding the rocket, rather it’s designed to make lock on as hard as possible and if it’s locked on, it has countermeasures.
Without maneuverability and pilot training, a fighter jet is just a sitting duck for enemy fighters or air defense systems. Their primary means of attack are their rockets and their primary means of defense are not getting locked onto in the first place and chaff but while it’s true that many feel it’s unecessary for fighter jets to have guns, or for pilots to know how to dogfight, it’s still necessary because in a rough situation you don’t want to be left hanging, you have to have a last resort. Also guns are used in close air support too.
The F-35 is not so agile a plane as the one it’s replacing, in many respects.
However, even if it was a real dog of a thing (it’s not), you’d still train BFM in it. For one, it’s an important foundational skill. Other skills are taught which build on what you learn from that, so even if we could guarantee you’d never need those skills, you’d still learn them anyway.
But then, you can’t guarantee they’ll never be needed. It’s all well and good to say “dogfights are in the past” but it’s not a very convoluted situation to imagine a fight WVR where BFM/ACM decides things.
You not seen Top Gun 2? The US big wigs are all for moving onto drone warfare, but Maverick had to step up in his jet fighter in the end.
/s
Latest Answers