Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!princeton!njin!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: infrared and interceptors Message-ID: <8796@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 4 Aug 89 13:06:16 GMT References: <8347@cbnews.ATT.COM> <8413@cbnews.ATT.COM> <8479@cbnews.ATT.COM> <8529@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Lines: 87 Approved: military@att.att.com From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >From: aws@vax3.iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) >I disagree that the F-16 was conceived as a pure air-superiority fighter. >It was designed to maneuver well and be cheap to build. Its lack of >medium range missiles would give it a considerable disadvantage in CAP, >fighter sweep, or other air superiority roles... What we have here is, to some extent, a dispute over terms. The YF-16, the original F-16, was unquestionably designed as a uncompromised daylight visual dogfight aircraft; this is a matter of historical record, since it was the basic objective of the Light Weight Fighter competition. The question is what "air superiority" means. Since others have written me personally asking for clarification, I'll elaborate. Many people don't understand that even if you ignore bombing raids etc., there are at least four different "fighter" missions which can call for rather different aircraft designs. Two of these missions -- "escort", accompanying long-range bombers, and "intruder", going out over hostile territory looking for trouble -- have fallen out of fashion, partly due to technological and tactical change, and I won't discuss them further. (Oh, okay, a brief comment on why that happened... Escort fighters are less necessary now that bombers attack individually rather than in formation -- a response to nuclear antiaircraft weapons, among other things -- and are less practical over intercontinental ranges. Intruder missions classically involved going in at night and lurking around an enemy airfield waiting for targets; modern radar and other sensors have made this unhealthy.) The two remaining missions are "air superiority" and "interception". The boundaries do get a bit fuzzy at times. The classical interception mission is defending North America against Soviet bombers. This demands sophisticated sensors and weapons to operate under bad conditions, because the bad guys will come in at night and in bad weather if they possibly can, accompanied by massive jamming and other deceptive tactics. Long-range missiles are important to improve a single interceptor's ability to take on multiple separated opponents, and several should be carried. Short-range missiles and guns are important as backups but are not primary weapons. The interceptor itself needs long range, to engage opponents at the longest possible distance (both to give an opportunity to try again if you miss, and to try to nail the bad guys before they get close enough to launch cruise missiles and the like). Long endurance is likewise important to cope with uncertain arrival times. Having a second crewman to manage sensors and weapons is highly desirable, given the difficult environment. High maneuverability and acceleration are relatively unimportant; the mission seldom calls for dogfights. Interceptors have become unfashionable, particularly in the US, as the manned-bomber nuclear threat has declined. The best current interceptor is probably the RAF's air-defence variant of the Tornado. Air superiority is a very different kettle of fish: maintaining control of the air above a battlefield, so that your own tactical bombers can operate unhampered and the opponent's can't get at your own ground forces. Conditions will be confused and chaotic, with visual identification almost certainly required before shooting and long-range engagements thus rare. Most targets will be fairly simple aircraft, simply because they are cheaper to build and numbers count on a non-nuclear battlefield; their ability to operate at night will be somewhat limited and seriously bad weather will shut them down. There will be a lot of them, so numbers and reliability are important for an air-superiority fighter. This means simplicity, since complex systems are almost never reliable, and a deliberate refusal to push the state of the art. That also helps on keeping the price tag down, which is very important if adequate numbers are to be had. Maneuverability is very important. So is small size, both to the eye and to radar -- in this environment, almost all kills involve surprise, and an aircraft which is harder to spot has a massive advantage. Almost all combat will take place at low altitude and subsonic speed, so turning and acceleration are much more important than speed and altitude capability. Ranges will be short, although endurance is still useful. Ability to operate from crude ground facilities is useful, since this puts the aircraft closer to the front and avoids unproductive transit time. The original YF-16 is the closest thing the West has built to an uncompromised air-superiority fighter in a long time; most such projects, including the later F-16 developments, get confused with interception and bombing missions and end up being too big, complex, unreliable, and costly to be a good air-superiority fighter. Qualitative superiority cannot overcome superior in-the-air numbers; the Me262 was vastly superior to any WW2 Allied fighter, with one fighter pilot estimating that it took 8 Mustangs to cope with one Me262, but the Allies *had* 8 Mustangs for each Me262, and we all know what happened. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu