On Fri, 09 May 2008 19:48:38 -0500, Dan wrote:

Douglas Eagleson wrote:
On May 9, 4:57 pm, Dan wrote:
Douglas Eagleson wrote:

snip

The russian mig-30 that literally stops in mid

flight and recovers, is another example. A forward canard allows this.
The "cobra" maneuver is not a very good combat move. Do a simple
free body diagram to see what happens to acceleration and velocity
vectors. The MiG is a sitting duck throughout the maneuver and takes a
long time to recover.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

The maneuver is obviously only a technical ability.


It's only good for air shows.

And impressing the Chicks.

As dog fighting
goes a well planned first approach with missles always wins.

A well planned anything usually wins over an ad-hoc response.

Not always. What happens if the missile fails to perform or the
target outmaneuvers it?

Plan B. There always needs to be a Plan B.

A dogfight as a rule can be forced with the lost aircraft. A sucker
aircraft and absorb/take the radar.

Please translate.

That would be nice.


after this occur a true missilefree dogfight happens.

All free battle has an AMERICAN superior first strike built in. If
this is lost, then what happens is a secondary senario occurs. An
litteral aircraft to aircraft and attritionloss war. When attrition
dictates a winner what happens?

All wars are a function of attrition.

Even if it is simply an attrition of will. A Semi-decent example
would be the Iraqi Air force in both conflicts. They didn't even try.

So large air battle planning fails when aircraft performance only
dictates.


Not to put to fine a point on things, but ALL battle planning is
limited to by the assets on hand to include available technology.

Which would of course include Intel, such as the enemies weapon
platforms capabilities. There is a reason the "Top-Speed" of US Naval
Vessels is never mentioned, or talked about in only general terms. If
you know what the other guy is capable of, you've got one leg up in
the planning process. If you know where he is at & what he is going
to do (tactics) you've got another leg up. Some of the major naval
battles of WW II were won by pure dumb luck. Both sides planned, but
one found out the location of the other first.
--
"Before all else, be armed" -- Machiavelli