dog fighting aircraft

Dog Fighting Aircraft - Pilots discuss how the A-10 Warthog's small turning radius and large cannon mean it can sting even the best fighters.

The king of close air support (CAS) – supporting troops on the ground with firepower – many would be surprised to learn that it is no slouch in air-to-air combat. Although the Warthog is not optimized for an air superiority role and lacks key capabilities such as high-speed radar and long-range radar-guided missiles that give its fighter brethren air-to-air superiority, even the greatest fighter pilots are rightly wary of engaging in close, turn-based combat with "low" dirt moving A-10.

Dog Fighting Aircraft

The Warthog's slow-speed agility combined with some clever tactics means that even the most advanced fighters can take a nasty sting from a skilled Hog driver. In fact, the US Air Force Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada teaches basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) in its A-10 class every two years, just in case pilots have trouble with the decoy. enemy combatant.

Air Combat Manoeuvring

Colonel Denny "Gator" Yount retired from the USAF in 2011. with an impressive 3,852 hours on the A-10. Among the many highlights of his career, he says one of the most rewarding is being an instructor at the Weapons School, specializing in the A-10 BFM. "The air-to-air guys have radar and are a lot faster than us, but they quickly realize that it's not worth going into the chat phone booth with us and putting up a fight."

A 66th Weapons Squadron A-10C carrying an AN/ALQ-131 electronic countermeasure in the far left station. Jamie Hunter

“The Weapons School recruits the best of the best pilots from operational A-10 wings. There are two six-month courses a year, and students start with instructors for a few weeks and then fly,” explains Yount. "BFM was and remains the first phase of the course. It's like raising a flag - no matter how good a student thinks they are, this course will be difficult. Weapons School flies at a level the students have never experienced before.

Yount graduated from the Weapons School in 1993. being a student. The 66th Armored Squadron's A-10 course at Nellis will also begin today as the BFM phase opens, he said. While it teaches pilots how to respond to air threats, it's more focused on teaching the Warthog maximum performance -- pushing it to its limits -- before moving on to traditional A-10 air-to-ground missions. . In the A-10 Weapons School course, students drop and use almost every weapon in the pigs' impressive arsenal.

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Since 1996 month of January. until 1999 In October, Yount returned to Nellis as an instructor at the Weapons School. “I was a BFM guy first and foremost,” he explains. "We pretty much took out the aircraft - most of the pylons and the TERs (triple ejection racks) - but we kept the two AIM-9 Sidewinders and the ECM [electronic countermeasures]. We taught the basics of BFM which was based on 1-v-1 close combat with another A-10. The BFM phase led into the ACM (Air Combat Maneuvering) phase and we did some 2-v-1 and 2-v-2 setups. We brought in a German F-4 training unit from Holloman (AFB, New Mexico) or worked with Nellis aggressor F-16s.

“Even if an apprentice was good enough, if he couldn't teach the technique, he wasn't good enough for us as gunsmiths. Whether you are the best bomber or the best BFM, if you can't go back to your squadron and train it, you are worthless. You must be able to spread knowledge for centuries."

“BFM was one of my natural inclinations,” Yount continues. "I've always been pretty good at it, starting out as a T-38 Talon instructor." Some of my friends in the F-15 taught me the basics. By the time I completed my Talon fighter pilot training, I had about 1,200 hours in that aircraft.

According to Yount, operational A-10 squadrons do not regularly practice BFM at the unit level because they typically have to check so many higher-priority boxes for things like CAS and bomb drops. However, there are examples of fighter squadrons requesting Differential Air Combat Training (DACT) with A-10 units to understand this complex enemy.

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Actually quite a lot of flying in the DACT A-10. It's called "Boar Combing" and it's very popular! They begin a hog circle to cover each other in a six o'clock defensive posture. Then we put our nose in and try to remove it. The main thing is to enter at high speed, shoot and crawl back to where the "pigs" do not have the strength to raise their noses.

Says Yount, “The soldiers tend to stay high and try to stick their nose in to get a hit and then get away—because we can't drive them off the high ground and bring them down. But if they stay with us in a fatal fight in our environment, we are very happy to do it all day long."

“The BFM is a mission kit that the A-10 guys will hopefully never have to use because the theory is that you do it for self-defense. F-15s or other defensive counter-air jets should be above us and keep all of this out of our way. But if you get a "leak" [enemy fighter that outperforms DCA], you have to train it to survive with two AIM-9M Sidewinders and an ECM [AN/ALQ-131 Electronic Countermeasures]. They are the only ones left on the plane when you press the big red button to open the shops. This reduces the excess weight and drag of external storage, making the A-10 more maneuverable and giving the pilot a better chance of avoiding a threat.

The Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) on the A-10 alerts the pilot if the aircraft is being tracked by enemy radar. The ECM pod provides the ability to jam the fighter's radar, but Yount says the main tactic right now is to try to get into the Doppler notch [a tactical move to hide in the blind spot of a combat radar that scans everything. about here] to change altitude and try to return to the approaching fighter. "Whether you're a forward or a defender, you want to make the first move. If you don't lead the fight, they will drive you."

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“Most other types of drivers didn't really understand our benefits until they had met us a few times. Regardless of rotation speed, the best turning radius gets the first chance to fire. In the corner, our turning radius was about 1700 feet, and when I was almost out of power, about 2100 feet, not much at all. So even if they can rate you, my gun can shoot them in the nose before they arrive. They have to respect this weapon - which means they have to get out of the way, which in turn gives them an opportunity. If you put A-10 in that close round, fine

The two attack weapons an A-10 pilot can carry in this situation are the AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missile and the massive GAU-8/A Avenger 30mm seven-barreled Gatling gun, which is traditionally considered airborne. - a ground impact weapon, but also very deadly in air to air. The A-10 is not equipped with the newer AIM-9X, so although pilots now wear the Thales Scorpion helmet-mounted sight, they cannot engage the enemy with a high-visibility missile. Spin speed is therefore very important when bringing a Sidewinder or weapon to an enemy thug.

"When they engage in a fight with us, they use up a lot of energy," Yount explains. "Then they want to light an afterburner and get away, but that makes my AIM-9 alarm go off even louder!"

If the pilot selects AIM-9, the A-10's weapon system switches to air-to-air mode. When the pilot wants to use the weapon, he shows a "funnel" on the Head-Up Display (HUD) to get an idea of ​​the bullet's trajectory and distance to the target. The A-10 lacks radar, so using this symbol effectively is as much an art form as it is a science. According to Yount, the choice of AIM-9 or weapon depends heavily on the range of the opponent. "When we train, of course we don't have live projectiles in the gun - we only shoot electrons, but we can still see everything on the HUD.

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"What you can't simulate is the shooting effect," enthuses Yount. "That white plume of smoke usually flows under the plane,

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