On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:56:51 GMT, Woody Beal
wrote:

On 12/20/04 16:38, in article ,
"Ed Rasimus" wrote:


BFM is always relevant to a greater or lesser degree, but if you want
to talk "relative performance" you've got to throw in a lot of
stuff--T/W, rate/radius, endurance, range, weapons available and don't
forget the ROE.

When you get to the "teen fighters" there isn't a whole lot of
difference in the basic numbers. Vipers, Eagles, Toms and Bugs all do
a pretty good job and on any given day, one or the other will reign
supreme.

Pride in your system is good, but there aren't many absolutes in
discussion of "The best BFM platform in the US inventory".


Ed,

You're right about absolutes to a point, but in the teen series fighters,
the F/A-18 has better high AOA ability. Its ability to point the nose when
slow and to force the defender to acknowledge its presence makes it slightly
superior. Add the new "departure resistant" PROM 10.7 FCC software, and
you've got a better jet.

Which kind of brings us full circle, doesn't it. High AOA ability is
always impressive, but it isn't good tactics to get to the place where
you have to use it. The best BFM is flown fast--ideally around your
corner velocity. If you find yourself in the regime of dependence upon
"departure resistant" software, you've already made some mistakes.

And that causes us to return to the basic truism that no one
intentionally fights 1-v-1 WVR for real.

I'd like to believe I'm a better pilot that the Viper drivers I've got video
of, but I'm really not. I have a jet that will just do things that their
airplanes won't.

At the risk of getting batted around by John again, I'll say it: With the
same skill-level pilots, the closest thing to the Hornet's BFM ability is
the F-16 big mouth.

It's not pride in the weapons system. It's matter of record.

And, I'm sure you recall exposure to aggressors--it isn't much
different whether you were dealing with USAF or USN, but typically
they took airplanes with significantly inferior numbers and used them
to soundly thrash us until we learned the basics of our own airplanes.

Vipers beat Eagles which beat Toms which get beaten by Hornets, which
in turn can get beaten by Vipers occasionally.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org