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
[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
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