Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!sun!amdcad!amdcad!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: European fighter designs
Message-ID: <1991May20.052407.22058@amd.com>
Date: 18 May 91 22:30:10 GMT
References: <1991May16.052804.17718@amd.com> <1991May17.063344.1835@amd.com>
Sender: military@amd.com
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 56
Approved: military@amd.com


From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)


>From: fsdjt2@thebox.rain.com (Dean Tabor)
>> General comment:  the importance of dogfights is vastly overestimated.
>> 80%+ of all victims of air combat never even see the attacker, much less
>> have a chance to maneuver against him.
>
>I don't think it's vastly overestimated to the 20% of pilots who do see 
>their opponent! ...

I didn't say they were completely unimportant, just that the emphasis on
them was excessive.  A fighter optimized to be hard to sneak up on and to
be good at sneaking up on other aircraft will be vastly more effective
and rather more survivable than a big, conspicuous lump that maneuvers
really well.

Even when a dogfight does ensue, maneuvering still is somewhat of a
secondary issue.  The attacker may have lost "strategic" surprise, but
"tactical" surprise is still more important than maneuvering:  dogfights
are lost more often by losing track of the opponent, or by misinterpreting
his intentions, or by being blindsided by *another* opponent who stood
clear and waited for a chance, than by being outmaneuvered.  The extra
opponent is a particularly bad case; when multiple aircraft are involved
on each side, numbers are far more significant than technical superiority,
for precisely this reason.

>... Going on pure facts and figures, this logic would mean it 
>makes more sense to have heavilly armed long range interceptors with 
>little/no true fighter capability, a concept that has been proven wrong time 
>and time again.

This logic means nothing of the kind.  It means that it makes more sense
to have small, inconspicuous, fast fighters that don't spray radar beams
around the sky unnecessarily.  To the extent that this concept has been
tried -- nobody's done it thoroughly, but aircraft differ enough in these
characteristics that some evaluations can be done based on existing
experience -- it has been proven *right* time and time again.

Even something as simple as painting a false cockpit canopy on the
underside of a fighter is more effective than increasing its roll rate
a little bit, because the false canopy confuses opponents and makes
"tactical" surprise more likely.

To deal with the red herring of interceptors -- a pet peeve of mind --
interceptors and air-superiority fighters are two completely different
animals.  A good aircraft for one can seldom do the other's job very well.
For strategic air defence, interceptors work very well; the confusion on
this point is because they have rarely been called on to do their proper
job in the last few decades.  All too often, people have built interceptors
and then tried to use them as air-superiority fighters.

-- 
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry